Cross-Culturalism in Children's Literature

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 311 465 CS 212 114

AUTHOR Gannon, Susan R., Ed.; Thompson, Ruth Anne, Ed. TITLE Cross-Culturalism in Children's Literature: Selected papers from the 1987 International Conference of the Children's Literature Association (14th, Ottawa, Canada, May 14-17, 1987). INSTITUTION Children's Literature Association. PUB DATE May 87 NOTE 118p.; Publication of this volume was made possible by grants from Dyson College of Pace University and The Growing Child Foundation. PUB TYPE Collected Works - Conference Proceedings (021)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC05 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Adolescent Literature; *Childrens Literature; *Cross Cultural Studies; *Cultural Differences; *Cultural Pluralism; Elementary Education; Foreign Countries; Literary Criticism; Mythology

ABSTRACT This conference proceedings contains a selection of the papers and awards given at a conference held at Carleton University in Canada. After the text of an address by the president of the Children's Literature Association, the following papers are included: (1) "Lone Voices in the Crowd: The Limits of Multiculturalism" (Brian Alderson); (2) "The Elizabeth Cleaver Memorial Lecture" (Irene Aubrey); (3) "Editing Inuit Literature: Leaving the Teeth in the Gently Smiling Jaws" (Robin McGrath); (4) "Cross-Culturalism and Inter-Generational Communication in Children's Literaturq" (Peter Hunt);(5) "Catechisms: Whatsoever a Christian Child Ought to Know" (Patricia Demers); (6) "The Queer, the Strange, and the Curious in 'St. Nicholas': Cross Culturalism in the Nineteenth Century" (Greta Little); (7) "The Clash between Cultural Values: Adult versus Youth on the Battlefield of Poverty" (Diana Chlebek); (8) "Fanny Fern and the Culture of Poverty" (Anne Scott MacLeod); (9) "Crossing and Double Crossing Cultural Barriers in Kipling's 'Kim'" (Judith A. Plotz); (10) "Adolescents as Instruments of Change: The English-language Novel Set in Post-Independence India" (Meena Khorana); (11) "Virginia Hamilton's Symbolic Presentation of the Afro-American Sensibility" (David Russell); (12) "Arabic Detective Fiction for Adolescents" (Sylvia Patterson Iskander); (13) "Circling the Square: The Role of Native Writers in Creating Native Literature for Children" (James H. Gellert); (14) "'Julie of the Wolves' and 'Dogsong': Ine Cultural Conflict" (Mary Lickteig); (15) "Florence Crannell Means: Cultural Barriers and Btidges" (Celia Anderson); (16) "Censors as Critics: 'To Kill a Mockingbird' as a Case Study" (Jill P. May); (17) "Safety in the Structures of Art: Bemelmans' Madeline Books" (Jackie Eastman); (18) "Kenneth Morris and 'The Mabinogion': The Welsh Influence on Children's Fantasy" (C. W. Sullivan, III); and (19) "Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale" (Jack Zipes). (MS) U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) co XThis document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it C Minor changes have been made to improve Cross-Culturalism reproduction quality Points of view or opinions stated in thisdocui , merit do not necessarily represent official In OERI position or policy Children's Literature IMI

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TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." Selected Papers from the 1987 International Conference of The 1 Children's Literature Association CJ

BEST COPYAVAILABLE 2 Cross-Culturalism in Children's Literature: Selected Papers from the 1987 International Conference of the Children's Literature Association

Carleton University Ottawa, Canada

May 14 -17, 1987

Editors Susan R. Cannon and Ruth Anne Thompson

Pace University Publication of this volume of Proceedings was made possible by grants from Dyson College of Pace University and The Growing Child Foundation.

The cover illustration by Elizabeth Cleaver is from The Enchanted caribou. (Toronto and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1965:19. INTRODUCTION

The Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Conference of ChIA contains the addresses and awards given at the conference held at Carleton University May 14-17, 1987, together witha representative selection of conference papers, a listing of the panels and workshops presented, and abstracts of those papers which could not be included in their entirety.

The success of the Fourte--" Ch LA Conference was due largely to the efforts of the Co- Chairs of the Conference Committee, Barbara Garner and Alan Mc Lay; to the work of the Paper Selection Committee, Ben Jones (chair), Glenn Clever, Sally Horrall, and Robert Lovejoy; and to the support given to the Conference by Carleton University.

Pctblication of this volume has been made possible by grants from The Growing Child Foundation and from Dyson College of Pace University and by the support services supplied by Purdue University and the Department of Literature and Communications of Dyson College, Pace University. We would especially like to thank Nancy Kleckner of The Growing Child; Jill May and her staff at Purdue (especially Nancy Baumann and Jackie Conaway) and, at Pace University, Provost Joseph Pastore, Dean Joseph Houle, and Prof. Robert Klaeger.

0

i CONTENTS

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 1

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Brian Alderson, "Lone Voices In the Crowd: The Limits of Multiculturalism" 5

ADDRESS: Irene Aubrey, "The Elizabeth Cleaver Malarial Lecture" 11

AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS 17

PHOENIX AWARD: Citation 19

Acceptance, Leon Garfield 20

Panel: Books of the 1987 ChLA Phoenix Award Winner, Leon Garfield

Mark West 21

Taimi Ranta 22

Agnes Perkins 25

Aiethea Heibig (Chair) 27

PLENA'Y PAPER: Robin McGrath, "Editing Inuit Literature: Leaving the Teeth in the Gently Smiling Jaws" 31

PAPERS: Peter Hunt, "Cross-Cuituralism and Inter-Generational Communication in Children's Literature" 37

Patricia Demers, "Catechisms: Whatsoever a Christian Child Ought to Know" 41

Greta Little, "The Queer, the Strange, and the Curious in St. Nicholas: Cross Cuituraiism in the Nineteenth Century" 49

Diana Chiebek, "The Clash between Cultural Values: Adult versus Youth on the Battlefield of Poverty" 53

Anne Scott MacLeod, "Fanny Fern and the Culture of Poverty" 57

Judith A. Piotz, "Crossing and Double Crossing Cultural Barriers in Kip ling's Kim" 61

Meena Khorana, "Adolescents as Instruments of Change: The English-language Novel Set in Post-Independence India" 67 David Russell, "Virginia Hamilton's Symbolic Presentation of the Afro-American Sensibility" 71

Sylvia Patterson Iskander, "Arabic Detective Fiction for Adolescents" ..75

James H. Gellert, "Circling the Square: The Role of Native Writers in Creating Native Literature for Children" 79

Mary Lickteig, "Julie of the Wolves and Doasong: The Cultural Conflict" 83

Cella Anderson, "Florence Crannell Means: Cultural Bafflers and Bridges" 87

Jill P. May, "Censors as Critics: To Kill A Mockingbird as a Case Study" 91

Jackie Eastman, "Safety in the Structures of Art: Berne 'mans' Madeline Books" 97

C. W. Sullivan, III, "Kenneth Morris and The Mabinoolon: The Welsh Influence on Children's Fantasy" 101

Jack Zipes, "Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale" 107

ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS 111

OTHER PRESENTATIONS 116

ri 1 Cross-Culturalism in Children's Literature: Selected Papers from the 1987 International Conference of the Children's Literature Association

, 0 The Presidential Address The Children's Literature Association: Cha La or ChLA? by Virginia Wolf

Members and friends of the Children's Literature Association, a few years ago, when I was asked to run for president of this organization, I agreed, thinking that giving this address would be a breeze.I knew, of course, that I would have other duties, such as writing many letters and running a few meetings, but those hardly seemed troublesome. You must remember that I was finishing a three-year term as ChLA's Treasurer, so almost everything looked relatively easy in comparison.Still, had I not had a fairly good idea of what I would talk about here, I would have found this feature of the presidency a major roadblock to my candidacy.But I knew.

I knew I would talk about how special this organization is to me because of the many dose friends I have rJade by being involved in it.I knew I would talk about the importance of friends who are colleagueswho think seriously about children's literature, who give it major importance in their professional and personal lives, and who love to talk about it with anyone, but especially so with someone who feels as strongly about it as they do.I knew, finally, that I would talk about specific individuals and their contribution to ChLA. For when I think of the Children's Literature Association, actual faces and voices come to mind, and I remember unique gifts of time and talent that these very real people have made to the growth and development of this organization.I remember conferences at Storrs, Ypsilanti, Harvard, Toronto, Minneapolis, Gainesville, Edmonton, Charlotte, Ann Arbor, Kansas City, and

Ottawa, and I remember stories about the conferences I missed at Williamsburg, Philadelphia, and Baylor.I remember Newsletters, Proceedings, Quarterlies, Touchstones, as well as a variety of other publications in diverse formats.I remember award and scholarFhip winners and countless stimulating papers.I remember over fifty officers, board members, and committee chairs inrashing through countless weighty issues facing the association. In essence, I remember what my good friend George Shannon calls "Cha La." A few years ago when he joined, he startled me with this pronunciation of what I had for about ten years called ChLA. But since then Cha La has come to seem a more apt expression of my feelings for this organization than the initials ever could.Belonging to and working for the Children's Literature Association have brought me many moments of happiness and contentment. I value the organization as one of a kindas a scholarly dub uniquely suited to my interests.

But this year as president and last year as vice-president have taught me to look at the Children's Literature Association differently and have ruined the speech I planned to make here.I wanted to talk about the very specific and wonderful work of certain individualsJill May, Perry Nodelman, Alethea He !big, Ruth MacDonald, Carol Gay, and Margaret Esmonde, and Jon Stott, and the list goes on and on. Some people have given of themselves in major ways so that Cha La would work.I have long felt that they deserve to be recognized for the length and breadth of their service.During the last two years, however, and perhaps earlier, if less consciously, I have realized that the Children's Literature Association is in the throes of change.It is no longer simply a scholarly club.It is now also a small business.Unfortunately, it is still largely run as a scholarly clubon volunteer labor.

Surely, a few of the details of what is now being done by ChLA will clarify what I mean. The Children's Literature Association offers its members an annual conference; a refereed, polished Quarteriv; the annual, Children's Literature; and a published proceedings of each conference.All of these services, of course, encourage the serious study of children's literature, but so do our many awardsup to four nowto promote scholarship, two for outstanding writing in the form of an article and book about children's literature, and, of course, the Phoenix Award. Then, too, there have been a variety of efforts to improve the study of literature by children.In addition to these services to members and to children's literature, ChLA now publishes a fewa very fewbooks about children's literature.

As recently as 1982-1983, the treasurer dealt almost entirely with matters of membership, collecting dues and paying bills acquired in providing membership benefits. The annual budget at that time was less than twenty thousand dollars.But in 1983 we paid for the publication of the ten year retrospective and for a readings book, and we began to collect revenue from the sales of these volumes.In four years' time, we have nearly tripled our budget. Although our membership has remained fairly constant, this year we took in nearly sixty thousand dollars.Our budget for next year is approved at eighty thousand dollars. To some extent, this increase results from our raising dues last year, but the lion's share, nearly thirty thousand dollars this year, comes from the sale of publicationsthe retrospective, the readings book, The First Steams, and Touchstones, as well as pamphlets such as "Graduate Studies in Children's Literature" and "The ChLA Membership Directory" and some brochures. ChLA has become a small publisher.

To deal with this phenomenon, in 1983 the Executive Board established an Office of Publications at Purdue University.At first monies received and spent at this office were the responsibility of the treasurer.But then, as the already unmanageable job of being treasurer required at least ten hours a week and occasionally became a full-time job, a separate budget and account were set up for the Chair of Publications at Purdue.Part-time staff were hired to help both the treasurer and the Chair of Publications. As vice-president, furthermore, I was charged with chairing a committee to explore and recommend future directions for the organization. This committee was very active in 1985-86, working with, among others, representatives of the Small Business Administration. Many of the committee's recommendations to the board in May of 1986 have been implemented; others are in the process of becoming so.

Chili among our recommendations was the creation of a central office, where all the business of the organization would be done. Everyone we consulted noted the many problems that result when the address of an organization changes frequently, as ours has every three years.Especially there is the loss of money and advertising.In addition, there are the confusion and inefficiency of having more than one set of financial records.

Also recommended was the increase in dues, which, again, was urged by everyone consulted.Before this increase, ChLA was not breaking even in supplying membership benefits.

The third recommendation, that we hire staff to carry out what Is now a business, was already in the process of being implemented. The Purdue office now pays seven part-time workers. ChLA has the services of a secretary paid by Purdue and of a computer half - owned by Purdue.But we cannot yet afford even a half -time director, let alone a full-time Executive Secretary or Office Manager, which is what we need.

As a result of consulting a retired publisher, we also recommended a series of steps for improving our chances for success in publishing: direct mailing as a means of advertising (the Purdue office has done much of this), surveying the market by contacting other, similar publishers, and exploring grant possibilities. The last two of these are clearly on the back burner as no one has had time or opportunity for taking them on.

Finally, the committee recommended a revision of the constitution to retain only that which will not need to be changed very often, and the creation of a procedures manual which might be changed frequently and which would provide new officers, board members, and committee chairs job descriptions.It would also separate the business functions of the organization from the advisory ones, clarifying what should be done by the office staff and what by the Executive Board.Lois Kuznets has had the responsibility this year of laying the groundwork for this manual.It is undoubtedly the most complicated of the tasks before us as well as the one most needed during this time of rapid change in our organizational structure. The creation and approval of by-laws and a procedures manual will take at least another year and will thereafter need to be updated on an annual basis.

Some of this is surely not news to any of you. The establishment of the office at Purdue and the increase in dues, for example, were announced in the renewal lettcsent out last fall.But even If you know about many of the changes that have occurred in the organization during the last few years, you probably know little of the difficulties and thinking involved in making the decisions that are now transforming the Children's Literature Association from a scholarly club, Cha La, to a small business, ChLA.

As I have already indicated, our main weakness as a business is our strong dependence on volunteer labor.It is, of course, also our great strength as a scholarly club.And, given what we have accomplished In about fifteen years, I certainly do not mean in any way to denigrate the contributions of all those who made us what we are today. On the other hand, the work now requires more time and expertise than volunteers can either be expected to possess or give. We need advice from publishers, banker accountants, lawyers, and experts In

"1 0 2 business management and financial planning.I can do no more than guess at the hours required weekly simply to maintain our businessat least eighty.

We have thus far managed at very little cost to get the expertise we absolutely had to have. But we cannot expect to do so indefinitely.For one thing, doing so requires enormous effort and ingenuity on the part of our volunteers. Most important, there is burnoutboth of our volunteers and of those who offer them free advice and serviceleading to our loss of these people.Before it is recognized, furthermore, burnout can lead to mistakes especially so when the volunteer must often make decisions with very little assistance and without adequate guidelines. The absence of a procedures manual and of specific procedures to be followed in making major decisions is, of course, our other main weakness as a business.

This year the Executive Board has had to deal with a serious problem resulting from these weaknesses: our treasurer's decision in 1985 to invest, unwisely as it turns out, the endowment of our scholarships, $20,870, in Secure Investments, a Texas real estate firm.Ruth MacDonald has repaid out of her own pocket over sixty percent of money lost to us when this firm declared chapter eleven bankruptcy last fall; she intends to repay the entire amount. Although she has also offered her resignation, both the Executive Board and I have refused to accept it. Her mistake, it teems to us, has already cost her more than enough. What's more, it is, as I have already indicated, our mistake, too. We did not recognize soon enough that we ask too much of our volunteers.

The crucial matters here are money and time, matters that we as scholars and lovers of literature often ignore. The money that passes through the ChLA office is now simply too big a responsibility for a volunteer. Although perhaps they would not be sc in an ideal world, both volunteerism and chanty must be partime activities for most of us, and by partime, of course, we mean that little amount of time we have left over after we have finished with the work required by our jobs and the responsibilities we have to our families.Clearly, tf e time and expertise required to run the business of the Chi!dren's Literature Association, as well as the amount of money involved, are increasingly beyond what we can expect volunteers to manage. The Executive Board intend, therefore, to rely fully on paid employees as soon as we are able.

Does all of this mean that Cha La is dying and that we are stuck with ChIA for the greater good of the organization, and of children's literature?I hope not. My interest is not in a small business, but rather in a scholarly club.I want to talk and write about children's literature and to share my thinking with you because you wish to do the same. Bonded as we are in our mutual love of children's literature, I want to see you at least once or twice a year so that I can maintain close friendships and build new ones. But without that small business supporting us, our opportunities for talking, writing, and meeting are at risk. We cannot continue to depend on volunteers. Cha La's security and growth depend on ChLA's becoming solvent and expertly managed.

3 b

;(.one Voices In the Crowd: The Limits of Multiculturalism by Brian Alderson

Before attending to my theme, I should like to acknowledge the honour of being asked to open the debate on -Cross.culturalism in Children's Literature.'As I sba it, in choosing a Trinidadian to inaugurate the Conference's first-night reception with stor;telling, and in choosing an Englishman to give the first address, ChLA N clearly illustrating the point of this yiiar's topic and I am both proud and abashed to share these initial responsibilities with Rita Cox. We colonials in our offshore islands are a long way from the bright, pulsing homeland of children's literature stud's and it is something of an ordeal to present what may seem a rather callow body of idols to those of you at the sophisticated centres of New Thought.

Moreover, speaking for my own country, i must confess that the notion of a Children's Literature Association Is something which Is likely to evoke ironic smiles rather than fullhearted enthusiasm. This is not just because the British prefer to create children's literature rather than to write or confer about It;it Is also because we have a rooted mistrust of hauling children's literature into Schools of Learning. One British commentator (who will figure significantly at a later stage in this paper) has remarked that he sees 'little future for the academic critic making an exhaustive study of Angst in the writings of William Mayne-wherefore I find it slightly unnerving to represent my country before an organization for whom 'Angst in the writings of William Mayne" Is possibly an issue of crucial interest.

I had therefore hoped to ,placate you by beginning my discussion with a quotation from an English 'touchstone-for here, I thought, I would be able to lay before you at once a piece of children's literatgra and one which had the ChLA seal of critical approval.Unfortunately, though, not many modem British writers have achieved the splendid status accorded the concocters of books like A Wrinkle IITime, and the best that I have been able to do is to find a passage from an author who does not seem to be a touchstone 1:: ut who is at least a phoenix.So here, by way of introduction, is a quotation from Rosemary Sutcliff's The Lantern Bearers (1959).It comes from the chapter where Roman Aquila, now a slave at Ullasfjord, sees the Viking Thormod about to throw a scroll onto the fire.He stops him, and explains to him what it Is that he Is about to destroy:

It is a book.It is as though the words of a man were caught and set down on a long roll, in those small black marks, so that other men may take them up at another time and in another place-maybe long after the speaker is dead-and speak them again.

So they ask him to say the words that are there:

Aquila hesitated for a moment of hot rebellion. Why should he lay the mindriches of the civilized world before these barbarians who spat on their house-place floor and ate and slept like swine? Then he put out his hand and took the beautiful piece of scribe's work that the old man held out to him. The words looked up at him familiarly as he opened it.It was the Ninth book of The Odyssey-a Latin translation.... Now he translated again, haltingly, as he read, into the Saxon tongue.

You may take that, If you care for the phrase, as a multicultural experience. A Greek text has been translated into Latin and is now being relayed by a RomanoBriton to Norsemen in their own language-and since there is a commonalty of experience between Odysseus and these northern seafarers, there is a sudden recognition of the magic by which the "small black marks' bring alive the voice of a dead mah.

What is of particular consequence for us here, however, Is the fact that Homer Is not being absorbed from the written page but from Aquila's halting translation. A sophisticated mode of discourse is giving way to swathing much more akin to the directness of the oral tale, and one may reasonably imagine Aquila looking at his audience as he traulates, drawing them into the story-just as Rita Cox drew the audience into her stories and as storytellers have done perhaps from the beginning of Story. In perusing your programme for this heavy date with cross-cutturalism therefore, I was not surprised to see recurrent references to folktales as a point wheta different cultures find common groundreferences to national traditions (Puerto Rican, say, or Inuit), to genres (the Pourquoi tale), to influences (the Mabinoeion and the Welsh), and even to educational practice ("Traditional Tales in Contemporary Classrooms"), and this provided me with the necessary excuse to examine a little more closek, what there is in folktale that enables it to appeal to audiences of diverse inheritances.Consider, if you will, the story of "little Louse and Little Flea".[At this point Mr. Alderson read his own translation of the tale from his Popular Folk Tales of the Brothers Grimm.)

This is a perfect example of a multi - cultural tale.I hesitate to offer as one reason for saying so the apparent fact that many people in a fairly heterogeneous, if vaguely academic, audience seemed to enjoy listening to it.Preferable would be the weightier argument that, as tong ago as 1913, Botte and Polivka noted variants of it in at least sixteen languages, from the Shetlands to India, and that a similar spread of popularity may be inferred from the section on Tale Type 2022 in the great Aame-Thompson Index of 1961.

And if reasons are sought for such widespread and long-iasting popularity, they, too, are not far to seek. In the first place there is the simple, but always satisfying, cumulative mechanism of the tole. One listens in order to find out what the next object of the sequence will be and in order to discover how the sequence will unwind at the end.For this pop.-Ise the actual objects are of little importance in themselves so that it does not matter if an English storyteller replaces the louse and the flea by Trttymouse and Tatlymouse or if a Maltese storyteller starts the story with a turkey. The essential tale remains.

A second, related characteristic is the fluency of the language which the storyteller uses.In building up a cumulation of eight events, with all the repetitions that are invotved, it is important to be brisk and to sustain the listeners' pleasure in the words of the telling (an end which I sought to reach in my translation through the rhythms and the assonances of the rigmarole).

Tha narrative structure and the linguistic momentum of the tale may thus be seen as universals which almost guarantee its success across a range of cultures, and whose adaptability justifies our seeing folktale as a major weapon in the dialoguepolylogue?among the different groups who may now live their lives within a single community.Indeed, I was myself invotved as an advisor in a lengthy research project undertaken by Jennie Ingham under the auspices of the Reading Materials for Minority Groups Centre at the Middlesex Polytechnic; it covered several boroughs in North London where were to be found immigrant groups from such diverse parts of the world as Italy and Bangladesh, Greece and Pakistan, Turkey and Viet Nam.

The purpose of the project was to cotlect from each group the oral tales indigenous to that group which were still being told within families in the mother-tongue. These tales formed a "bank" which, in itself, demonstrated the richness of traditional storytelling and which, on tape, still preserves a resource for the student of comparative folklore.But the project went beyond the stage of mere accumulation. A number of the tales from different language areas were translated into the languages of participating groups 3o that the universality of their appeal could bo obsern.i and so that, eventually, a series of 'mufti-lingual" editions could be published as picture books for families from dfferent linguistic backgrounds to share.1

What was of Interest in this everimentand what will (I hope) lead me towards the crux of this paperwas the gap that opened up between folktale RS told story and folktale as translated artefactespecially folktalo as printed story. The intellectual 'processing" that went on (especially among the "non-professional" participants) as a natural experience in one language was transferred to another, or as spoken word was seen to be acquiring the "dignity of print," led to various encroachments on the storyteller's tale which inhibited Its original spontaneity. Worries about the cruelties or the inequalities so rife in folktales threatened bowdlerization. The directness of speech rhythms was felt to be not dignified enough to appear in a printed book.In other words there was a perceived difference between 'traditional" works and more self - consciously "compo3ed" works which points towards a fundamental distinction that has to be made between what happens in the ever-approachable traditional tale and what happens in literature.

1 3

6 Here Is an example which seems to me to demonstrate this distinction in a peculiarly apposite way.[Here Mr. Alderson read his own translation of The Collar' by Hans Christian Andersen.)

What we have here is a tale which numerous editors and publishers have bcen happy to include under the rubric "folIctale'.Indeed, the work for which I translated it was a new edition of the Pink Fairy Book, originally edited by that eminent folklorist Andrew Lang; on many occasions the story has appecred In other compilations with such labels as "Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales' or 'Favourite Tales of Grimm and Andersen,' as though Andersen were simply handing on a narrative that belonged within a larger body of traditional work.

In this the editors and publishers may have been partially misled by that very obvious storytelling characteristica sense of the presence of the storytellerthat subsists within so many of Andersen's tales (and about which I shall say more shortly).But these oral characteristics serve only to emphasize the various ways in which The Collar is not, and can never be, a traditions' tale.Probably the most obvious of these is the tale's reliance on specifics to make its effect. Where 'Little Louse and Little Flea" may be seen as being infinitely adaptable to the circumstances of its audience, The Collar depends for its success on a duster of references which cannot be replaced by any alternatives.

At its most general The Collar" is about courtship procedures, social gradations and concepts of moral behaviour prevalent in (and perhaps most easily recognized by) the Denmark of the mid-nineteenth century. These circumstances cannot be replaced by substitutes from some other country at some other period without radically changing the story, and it is perhaps only because of a certain amount of sccial inertia that most Europeans and Americans of the late twentieth century can still see the point of it.What a Maltese, or a Turk, or a Bangladeshi would make of ItI do not know.

And this specific cultural background for the story is matched by its circumstantial detail. The events, the humour, the point all depend upon the precise objects and environment that Andersen has summed up. Comb, boot-jack, garter, scissors, paper-mill can be replaced by no equivalees.(Indeed, there is a very pertinent example of this to be found in the version of The Collar' that Andrew Lang used in the first edition of the Pink Fairy Book. For not only did he announce that the story was translated from the German of Hans Christian Andersen but he also gave no supervision to the exactness of his source, so that we find the collar beginning his adventures in company with a boot jack and a hair brush! An innocuous enough substitute, you may say, but when the jokes come to be made about the comb losing all her teeth the translator is in a fix. The best that can be done is to have the hair-brush lose its hair, which only makes sense at a crude verbal level.)

Even more significant for the purpose of this analysis is the language in which the story is told.For although The Collar', like so many of Andersen's tales, appears to stem from an oral source (note the directness of address, the dramatic use of dialogue, the dear attempt to draw the audience in to the story), It has none of the casual mannerisms of the folldale.Everything is precis* calculated to follow the tones of Hans Christian Andersen and not some featureless Mother Goose; you hear him in the puns and the tropes, and, above all, you hear him in the complex ambiguities of tone. Just what sort of story is The Collar,' a comic anecdote, a satire, an allegory, a moral tale, or the send-up of a moral tale?ft is a combination of all these and thus owns to a sophistication of technique beyond anything that could be retained by the comparatively simple narratives of folktale.

Speaking as one who has translated both Grimm and Andersen and also attempted to study the history of their translation, perhaps I may reinforce this point by noting how the two texts call upon different skills? With Grimm one works best by relaxing into what may be thought of as "folktale idiom% with Andersen one must be constantly alert to the nuances of his particular tone of voice.From 1848 onwards Andersen-English has been bedeviled by translators who have not merely substituted hair-brushes for combs but who have undercut or flattened the humour, the irony and the colloquialism of his style. Where we have heard:

'I'll have to propose to the comb,' said the collar. It Is remarkable how you keep ail your teeth, little lady! Have you ever thought of getting engaged? We find Caroline Peachey, an early translator of the tale, writing:

I can still address the comb.It is quite delightful to see how long you have kept your teeth, fair lady! Thus spoke the False Colter to the Comb.'Have you never thought of betrothing yourself?"

And such infelicities and misrepresentations have continued in print down to the present day.

What emerges (I hope) from this laborious discussion of The Collar' is first an example of the distinction between folktale and literature, and second, an assertion of the vital role of the personality of the author in the making of literature. This may seem to be a particularly callow truism, but it is one that needs to be iterated in any discussion of cross-culturalism in children's literature if only to remind us that a division exists between the artist (who may be working not just within one circumsaibed culture but simply perhaps within the confines of his own head) and his promoters, his acolytes, his critics who may harbour pious notions about the need of this work to be 'accessible' to as wide an audience as possible.

A leading proponent of "accessibility' is the English author and critic, Bob Leeson, who, in his book Reading and Righting has set out what I take to be the most consistently argued case for the spread of cross- culturalism in children's literature. Since members of ChLA are, by definition, widely read in their subject, it is hardly necessary here to enter a long description of Bob Leeson's thesis.Suffice it therefore that I remind you of his historical exposition, which shows how the growth of children's literature in England was indissolubly linked with the growth of the bourgeoisie and how, right through to the post-war years, it has reflected bourgeois assumptions and values. These Leeson sees as exercising a powerful restraint on the accessibility of books for the children of today's multicultural societies (and he would probably argue that very term 'multicultural" should apply not merely to the diversification of national or racial groups but also to tilt ...sification of social classes and genres:male, female, hermaphrodite, etc.).

Resting his case on the view that 'the future of literature is linked very much with the expansion of democracy in all aspects of life" (171), he argues for a revitalization of literature through a conscious adoption or adaptation of the modes of 'oral' or 'folk' culture.Casting doubts (as we have seen) on the value of studying Angst in the writings of William Mayne (142) he sees writers and children and the intermediaries between them parents, teachers, libraries, etc.as forming a sort of gigantic commune through whose corporate activity a wider enthusiasm for children's books may be promoted. The writer may learn his trade as much as anything by learning his audience; the discussion of this work should be carded out not in the academic critic's ivory tower but in do-it- yourself fashion, among the consumers themselves.

There is much in Reading and Righting with which it is easy to sympathize, not least Bob Leeson's commitment to the unique place of books in 'the global village' and his recognition that the future of the book can only be assured if a broad base of book-readers can be sustained.But, as I have already suggested, the attempt to harmonize or re-harmonize oral-cultures and print-culture is fraught with contradiction and may become a retreat into the generalities of wishful thinking. For instance, it is hopelessly crude to try to summarize the sociology of children's reading in an historical survey of a hundred or so pages, much of it dependent upon secondary sources (which members of ChLA will know to be notoriously unreliable).While it may be true that the economic foundations for the growth of children's literature rested securely on a middle-class readership, this did not lead to a monolithic propaganda campaign on behalf of a particular Weltanschauung. From its very inception English children's literature was to prove hospitable to a multitude of talents multitude of axes to grind (or no axes at all), and any study of the popular literature of the past, especially the periodical literature, will show that authors reached far beyond a limited "middle-class" audience. (The fact that a proletarian audience enjoyed being regaled on works whose jingoism and social message are disapproved of by Leeson is beside the point.)

Furthermore, if we turn to the encouragement of contemporary readers, we find a similar crudity ar.d contradiction in sociological estimates. Leeson is glad to embrace the immensely popular Enid Blyton, that bete noire of the English critical scene, as an example of an author who 'knew just how children like a story to be (165)

4 ir 8 and whose success guaranteed the possibility of the market's oeing able to cany less immediately attractive work. At the same time he has to accept that although her books crossed multiple boundaries of age, language, class and sex, the tone and content of much of her writing ran exactly counter to what rrequires of an author on the 'multicultural' stage. And more rec :ntly the same thing can be said of Enid Blyton's successor at the head of the bestseller lists, Roald Dahl.Children from all backgrounds dote on his books and the swashbuckling directnessf their nddress, but the sensitive adult social critics are bemused by his indiscriminately subversive themes.

Presently at this point do the less generous proponents of cross-cufturalism begin to show their hand. For while the laissez faire of the old bourgeois order may have contained with it the substance for critical ivory towers, the do-it-yoursett criticism of the commune is suddenly seen to point in the direction of conformism and censorship. From arguing that it is valuable for authors to take into account the varied social composition of their audience, or the reductive effects of stereotyping, or the need for us to respect our environment, the atcs or the commune may move on to indicting those authors who do not do these things (hence the blackmailing of the publishing house, the Bocflay Head, to withdraw Helen Bannerman's Little Black Sambo from its catalogue, and the co-opting of young readers by the Inner London Education Authority to blacklist books which they considered racist or sexist). The pressures of conformism, applied by those with the best multi-cultural interests at heart, serve only to restrict the free play of an author's talent within the work that he is creating (or, what may be worse, to influence the climate of publishing so that the authors may feel constrained from the start to adhere to certain given norms).

If we ore to ask for a rationale which justifies a return to Prescriptionwhich has so often been the bane of children's literaturethen I think that it must lie in the moral assertion that 'reading is good for you.' We, who are committed readers and who, like Leeson, desire children to become committed readers, oo so because we have some sense that it is an improvingoccupation, the more so if it takes account of our cor.temporary dilemmas, or helps to widen our social sympathies. This seems to me to be eyewash, if it can be proved to be anything at all. One could argue that there are many occasions when watching a television programme (of one kind) may be vastly more 'improving' than reading books (of another kind).If a reason is sought for us to encourage children to enjoy reading it has nothing to do with the tenuous benefits of social realism, but rather it is to give children access to a field of emotional and intellectual riches beyond anything that any other medium may offerto give them the opportunity to add a dimension of experience to their own lives.

What that dimension may be cannot be calculated, for it is dependent upon so many variables.Insofar as it figures in my present argument, however, it may stand for the potential that Aquila:. 'small black marks' have to speak to us and to represent the personalities of an array of authors not to be confined within notional limits of 'accessibility.' As people with a concern for children (and as readers of literature) our business is surely not with regulation but with evocationencouraging children to go beyond themselves and make (scoveries that will extend their awareness of their own capacities. For despite the conformism that is so often demanded by those who wish to see children's books serve a social or a moral purpose, there remains room for the individual voice which is not to be easily transposed into the idiom of the day and which may need the likes of us to be discovered and made known.

By way of conclusion I should like to read a passage from just such a writeralas, again, not one to be elected among the hewers of touchstones, but one at least whose Angst is ready and waiting for you to study.I have chosen the dosing paragraphs of one of William Mayne's most remarkable books, partly because we may hear through them the distinctive voice of a craftsman in words, and partly because they represent the way in which a book for children may attain the stature that we ascribe to all great literature:absolutely monocultural for it is one person finding the only way in which a thing may be said.

The book is now, I believe, out of print; its author remains a controversial and often derided figure; but in listening to this quotation I would ask you also to bear in mind the wise words of Neil Philip (whom ChIA has recently honoured for his critical assessment of Alan Gamer):If children will not read Mayne, it N not Mayne's fault. Children do not read him not because he is unreadable, but because teachers teach them to read in a way which excludes him' (20).[Mr. Alderson concluded by summarizing the background to, and reading the dosing paragraphs of William Mayne's A Game of Dark.] Notes

1 An official report on the project was produced as a video, with an explanatory booklet, under the title Telling Tales Together (Caedmon Trust, 1987).ten of the stories were produced as picture books, in dead- languages, by Luzac & Co. between 1985 and 1986 and further titles, under the editorsI.:p of Jennie Ingham, are to be published by Andre Deutsch.

Works Cited

Aame, A. The Types of Folictales: a classification...translated and enlarged by Stith Thompson. 2nd ed. Helsinki: 1961.

Alderson, Brian. Hens Christian Andersen and his Eventvr in England.Hertfordshire: Worm ley, 1982.

Exhibition notes for Grimm Tales in English. London:British Library, 1985.

Andersen, H. C. Danish Fairy_Legends and Tales. 2nd ed.London: 1852.

Bate, J. and G. Polivka. Anmerkungen zu den 1Gnder-und-HausmOrchen der Br Oder Grimm. 5 vols.Leipzig: 1913- 1931.

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Popular Folktales of the Brothers Grimm. trans. Brian Alderson. London: Gollancz, 1978.

Leeson, Robert. Reading and Righting.London: Collins, 1985.

Mayne, William. A Game of Dark.London: Hamilton, 1971.

Philip, Neil.'Children's Literature and the Oral Tradition.Further Approaches to Research in Children's literature. ed. Peter Hunt.Cardiff:Wales Institute of Science and Technology, 1982: 5-22.

10 ELIZABETH CLEAVER MEMORIAL LECTURE by Irene E. Aubrey

I am honoured and happy to have been asked to speak about Elizabeth Cleaver. She had been scheduled to participate in this conference, but cancer claimed her life on July 27, 1985.I met Elizabeth for the first time in 1969 when one day she came to the Westmount Public Library where I worked, and in a friendly, casual way, introduced herself to me.I had just been looking at her two books, How Summer Came To Canada and The Mountain Goats of Temlaham.I was delighted to meet her, of course, and over a period of sixteen years in which we remained good friends, Elizabeth's greetings were always warm and spontaneous.

Once embarked on a career as an illustrator, Elizabeth Cleaver never wavered in her determination to make beautiful picture books and this commitment was a guiding force in her life.

Even though she began as young as three years old to cut and tear paper, an activity which, over the years, would serve well in helping her to develop her collage technique, Elizaoeth didn't come to the full realization of where her true talent lay until she began her university studies.

Elizabeth's full name was Elizabeth Ann Mrazik Cleaver. She was born on November 19. 1939, in Montreal, of Hungarian-Canadian parents, Rosalie and Frank Mrazik, who had immigrated to Canada in the 1930s.Elizabeth was the youngest of four children. A sister and brother still reside in Montreal and another brother lives in Budapest Her parents died in the early 1980s.

Elizabeth received her elementary education at Aberdeen School in Montreal and part of her secondary education in Sarospatak in Hungary, where the family had reiumed after the war years, in the expectation of again taking up permanent residence. The family came back to Canada, however, in the late 1950s.

Elizabeth resumed her studies in science; all the children had pursued science studies and Elizabeth was particularly interested in mathematics. While attending Sir George Williams University (now Sir George Williams Campus of Concordia University) Elizabeth made the discovery that her real interests were in the area of art and design. She had prepared her first collage that eventually became pages 28 and 29 in her book How Summer Came to Canadait depicts the scene of Winterwhich keeps the Far North in its icy grip.Elizabeth was now interested to team more about the principles of art and design and took further instruction at the School of Art and Design of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Ecole des Beaux Arts. She also took the time to acquire practical secretarial skills.

By the middle of the 1960s, Elizabeth was married to Edward Cleaver and living in Toronto. She hoped to FM a career in this city as an illustrator of children's books. To help support herself, she worked as a aecretary for an advertising firm.She had completed twenty collage pictures for a chiAren's story called The Dragon Story written by Ted Wood. She tried unsuccessfully to get it published and it remains onpublished.(All the publishers felt that it would be too expensive to reproduce her collages in full colours.) She entered one of the collages in the New York Society of Illustrators Annual National Exhibition in '..68 and wa., given a Citat2on for Merit.

To use Elizabeth's own words, she was 'trying to find her way in art. As a child, I always enjoyed cutting paper and playing with cut-out books.In a way, I went back to that time and made my images from simple cut-out shapes, guided by spontaneous intuition' (*Words and Images' 186).

Elizabeth had met Judith St. John who was the Head of the Osborne and Lillian H. Smith Collections at the Toronto Public Library.At a reception to celebrate Young Canada Book Week in 1967, Miss St. John introduced Elizabeth to William Toye, editorial director at Oxford University Press in Toronto. Thus began a professional relationship which would produce a series of fine books, beginning with the one on poetry called The Wind Has Wings: Poems from Canada.In several cases, their books would earn awards for both of them.Elizabeth always thought of Miss St. John as the fairy godmother of The Wind Has Wings. For a while, however, it was thought that the project wouldn't materialize as Elizabeth underwent surgery for cancer at the end of 1967.But when Mr. Toye assured Elizabeth that he still wanted her to illustrate the manuscript, she felt encouraged by this welcome piece of news and recovered sufficiently to begin work on the book in March, 1968.

Elizabeth's list of accomplishments is impressive: she illustrated two books of Canadian poetry: The Wind Has Wings: Poems from Canada and The New Wind Has Wings: Poems from Canada; a collection of folk tales of French Canada, The Witch of the North; a collection of Canadian folk and fairy tales, Canadian Wonder Tales, originally published in two volumes in 1918 and 1922; four North American Indian tales, How Summer Came to Canada, The Mountain Goats of Tem !ahem, The Loon's Necklace, and The Fire Stealer; and four different editions of a book for adults, published on the Melville Press which Elizabeth established to publish books in a limited edition, such as her Love and Kisses Heart Book. She wrote and illustrated a ballet story, Petrouchka. an alphabet book, ABC; an :rtuit tale, The Enchanted Caribou; and The Miraculous Hind: A Hungarian Legend.

But Elizabeth also had other interests and worked as well as a freelance artist and as a lecturer:for example, she did lovely pictures for a story called The Coming of the Com" which appeared in an eighth-grade reader published by Houghton Mifflin in 1981 and contributed an illustration for the section on poems and rhymes for the 1973 edition of Childcraft How and Why Library; she illustrated one of Gilles Vigneault's poems, "Ouand vcus mourrez de nos amours," which appeared in an issue of Perspectives. The stage held a special fascination for Elizabeth.She designed, for the 1970-1971 season of the Centaur Theatre in Montreal, a set of posters, and assisted in the design of a Christmas shadow show for children, based on Inuit folk tales.

Elizabeth made two other posters: one for the Canadian Library Association to celebrate Young Canada Book Week in 1969 and another for the Canadian Section of IBBY (International Board of Books for Young People) to celebrate the International Year of the Child in 1979.Also, for IBBY, she made a big, fat white cat, featured in their Cats of the World.

In 1972, Elizabeth travelled to Baker Lake in the Northwest Territories to work on a project with the children attending Kamantuak School. This project involved the adaptation of Inuit legends to shadow puppetry through printmaking techniques. She prepared a book-length manuscript on the project ;:.as never been published. Thirteen years later, however, Elizabeth would be able to create shadow puppets to illustrate an Inuit tale published under the title The Enchanted Caribou and she would include instructions on how to make shadow puppets.

When Elizabeth returned to Montreal from Baker Lake, she received several letters from the children. One boy wrote:"I like the way you illustrate.You add your picture to the story. You use your brain very well" (correspondence).

Before her Hungarian legend The Miraculous Hind came out in book form, Elizabeth had witta.n the text and made the pictures for a filmstrip with the same name, produced by the National Film board of Canada in 1971. Between 1977 and 1978, Elizabeth collaborated on a television series called Boucaniers d'eau douce for the Ontario Educational Communications Authority. The series included thirteen legends with the purpose of teaching French to English-speaking students. Her collages were the same as those she made for her books, except that the animated portions of the figures. And in 1982, The Westmount Public Library asked Elizabeth to make two very large (42" x 74") linoleum prints of Petrouchka and the Ballerina from her book Petrouchka. The prints hang in the Children's Department.

Elizabeth did thorough research in preparation for a book (by the way, since looping at her manuscript material at the National Library of Canada, I discovered tit: some of her notes are in shorthand, a throwback to her days as a secretary, and others are in Hungarian).

Elizabeth wanted to excel and she brought a total commitment to her work. She would often express her feelings of happiness and contentment when she had completed the work on her pictures.

Her interests were varied:for instance, she studied Jung, music, ballet, lithography and attended many seminars, directly or indirectly connected with her work (one of the seminars that she especially appreciated was called Story and Myth, held at Niagara University in the 1970s).

12 Elizabeth was a creative person who deeply believed in the power of books. Her own books were featured in several exhibitions in Canada and elsewhere. She thought that children and adults should have the opportunity to see artistically beautiful books.

Let us now look at a filmstrip of one of her books, The Loon's Necklace, prepared by Weston Woods.

Elizabeth was elected to membership in the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1974.

She was a soft-spoken, caring person who had many fiends, and who kept close ties with her family whom she loved dearly.

There was, at times, an air of fragility about Elizabeth. She was divorced and on her own since the middle 1970s. She always knew that she would make it, but she didn't always know how. She was fortunate in having the support of her family.

She loved libraries and museumsand she loved to read. She was interested in learning. She even attempted to leam French. One summer, she took a course in which the participants came from Canada and the United States. She said that, although she didn't team to speak French, she did, however, make a lot of friends.

Elizabeth received many invitations from all parts of Canada to speak about her books. Although she was grateful for the opportunity to meet the public and to talk about her work, she, nevertheless, would say that she didn't particularly enjoy preparing talks as she found it more worthwhile to do artwork.

In 1980, she completed her thesis for a Master of Fine A is from Concordia University.It is called "Words and Images:Investigation into the Literal and Symbolic in Illustrati m of a Text.'Her thesis gave her the means by which to 'understand, articulate and communicate" her creative process.

The National Library of Canada acquired, in 1985, shortly before her death, the original illustrations and related manuscript material for eleven of Elizabeth's books.1 The pictures for her other two books The Wind Has Wings Poems from Canada and the Miraculous Hind: A Hungarian Legend are in, respectively, the Osborne and Lillian H. Smith Collections of the Toronto Public Library and in the Rare Book Room, McLellan Library of McGill University, Montreal.

In an article called "Idea to Image: The Journey of a Picture Book," Elizabeth Cleaver says, "As a picture book artist I find it exciting to go over my work and discover how imagery unfolds within it.When I began searching for themes to work with, I found that I was attracted to the legends of the North American Indian, to the folklore of French Canada, where I grew up..., to legends of Hungary, the country of my family's origins and to puppetry and dance" (156).Several of Elizabeth's books fit into the context of this conference on cross-culturalism in children's literature.

When Elizabeth first met William Toye, in the late 1960s, she expressed the desire to illustrate Indian legends of Canada. She was keenly interester in these legends and also wanted to make them available to children in colourful picture books. Elizabeth and William Toye worked together on four books of North American Indian legends, for which he wrote the text: How Summer Came to Canada, The Mountain Goats of Temlaham, The Loon's Necklace and The Fire Stealer. They also collaborated on other books, published by Oxford University Press: The Wind Has Wings: Poems from Canada, The New Wind Has Wings. Poems from Canada, ABC and The Enchanted Caribou which was published after Elizabeth's death.

Elizabeth and William Toye worked closely together when they prepared a book for publication.It was known that Elizabeth appreciated his sound and helpful advice.But, as in all relationships, their collaboration could be difficult at times, especially during those last few days when they were working hard to meet the publication deadline and pressure was building up.If Elizabeth needed an extra bit of urging, Mr. Toye seemed able to provide it! From parts of their correspondence held in the National Library, it is evident that Mr. Toye was thoughtful and diplomatic in his approach. On one occasion, when he returned a piece of artwork to Elizabeth, he wrote that he was doing it, "so that you can with it" (Correspondence). The term 'play" was in reference to the way that Elizabeth described her method of assembling her collages.Certainly Elizabeth and William Toye had one of the most successful author/illustrator/editor relationships.

Collage was Elizabeth's "favourite way of creating images since it ... (was] concerned with imaginative invention" ("Words and Images' 187).Elizabeth particularly enjoyed juggling her pieces of cut and torn paper until they formed a composition that suited and pleased her.This became a form of visual play for her.Before she could begin, however, to put the different elements of her picture together, there were other steps that she had to undertake: she would read the text several times until she had formed an idea of what pictures she would like to do; research her material; prepare pencil drawings which she would transfer to linoleum blocks; make monoprints (textured paper) and try endless combinations; and, finally, make the collage composition.It could take Elizabeth as long as a year to work on the illustrations for a book (in one case though, that is, for Petrouchka it took four to five years as she kept putting it aside to do other things). When completed, the illustrations could combine a variety of materials; cut and torn paper and others such as lace in The Miraculous Hind, birch bark in The Fire Stealer and a key in ABC. William Toye said of Elizabeth that she possessed an intuitive sense of design.in her delightful, amusing alphabet book ABC, for instance, he cut-outs for her words, chosen for their universal appeal, are artistically arranged.

Elizabeth illustrated two books in deck and white. One is Canadian Wonder Tales, a new edition of two collections of North American Indian legends and European-Canadian fairy tales, originally published as Canadian Wonder Tales in 1918 and Canadian Fairy Tales in 1922. The author of these collections is Cyrus MacMillan. Judy Taylor of the bodley Head in London had written to Elizabeth and asked her if she would illustrate Canadian Wonder Tales. Doing the pictures In black and white, at this stage of her career (1973, 1974) represented a challenge to Elizabeth and, to make them, she used simple prat making methods like monoprints, cardboard and cut paper, linoleum prints, collagraph and mixed media.

The other book done in black and white is The Enchanted Caribou.Elizabeth had been in touch with Jean Karl of Atheneum in New York, who decided, among the several projects which Elizabeth submitted to her, to publish The Enchanted Caribou.Oxford University Press agreed to publish the book for the Canadian market. The Enchanted Caribou is an knit tale of transformation: when the girl he loves is tricked and transformed into a white caribou, a young hunter usea magic to bring her back to him. To illustrate the story, Elizabeth created shadow puppets, a medium which lent itself very well to its magical theme. The book is striking and appealing in its simplicity and has the look of folk art.Elizabeth had found a perfect vehicle for her love of puppetry.

Most of Elizabeth's work was in colourcolour and texture were the dominant features of her artwork. Reviews of her books often contained the words "brilliantly coloured illustrations," or words to that effect.One reviewer spoke of her stories as "peacock-bright stories" (Times-Canada).Elizabeth found working in colour "very difficult" because it was "a great struggle" for her to achieve a colour relationship that was harmonious" ("Words and Images" 178).In her first book The Wind Has Wings: Poems from Canada, a collection of poems compiled by Mary Alice Downie and Barbara Robertson, Elizabeth prepared coloured collages which alternated with black-and- white linoleum or potato prints.Trees dominate her compositions in this book, and, In fact, throughout her artwork in general, the image of the tree is featured.(It is interesting to note that one of the things that Elizabeth wanted to do before her death was climb and sit in her favourite tree in Westmount Park.)

The Wind Has Wings was a landmark in Canadian children's literature. One felt that it should be given official recognition, and when the Canadian Library Association established, in 1971, the Amelia Frances Howard Gibbon Award for the best illustrations in a Canadian book for children, Elizabeth was its first recipient. A second edition was published in 1984 with the title The New Wind Has Wings: Poems from Canada.

Elizabeth's two first books of North American Indian legends, How Summer Came to Canada, a Micmac legend, and The Mountain Goats of Tem laham (a Tsimshian legend), were done in the same year (1969); The Loon's () ta

14 Necklace, another Tsimshlan legend, was done in 1977 and The Fire Stealer, an Ojibwa legend,was done in 1979. Elizabeth felt a great affinity with the North American Indian legend and her excellently-coloured collages, except for The Loon's Necklace, where the brilliance of the pictures is more subdued, capture the emotional intensity of tire tales.Elizabeth's use of colour to illustrate the legends has sometimes been described as inauthentic.But she had her own perception of these tales and she portrayed their legendary quality in an expressive and insightfulway. Her illustrations sometimes had other elements besides cut-paper, such as pine needles, cedar branches, birch bark, and twigs.

The Witch of the North:Folk Tales from French Canada, adapted by Mary Alice Downie, was published in 1975.Elizabeth was eager to illustrate this book and she had been asked to make one picture for each of the nine legends (all the pictures, except one, are in colour).

In the execution of her pictures, Elizabeth felt somewhat hampered by the fact that she could only make one picture for each story, rather than several pictures for each story as was her usual approach in her plcti. books.If one has seen the original illustrations for The Witch of the North, one can understand Elizabeth's frustration with the colour reproductions in the book.

When Elizabeth was approached by The National Aim board of Canada to do a story and pictures, within tha framework of a series that would introduce children to the various Canadian ethnic groups, she chose The Miraculous Hind: A Hungarian Legend which is a legendary account of the founding of the Hungarian nation and knew that it would have universal appeal.

She chose this legend since her ancestry was Hungarian. Her retelling of the story of two brothers, whose quest to capture a hind leads them to a new land and a new way of life, was based on thepoem written by Janos Arany in 1863 and translated by E. D. Butler in 1881. When Elizabeth did the book version, she had to addsome new illustrations and experienced some difficuity in creating harmony between the facing pages.Her main figures are created by linoleum cuts and the detail of their costume is rich.After the publication of The Miraculous Hind, Elizabeth received a letter from a librarian and naturalist in New Zealand who wanted to know why the hind had been depicted with horns.Elizabeth'', explanation was that the hind was a divine being and that, In mythology, there are many references to hinds with antlers.

In 1976, Elizabeth met Jean Kari of Atheneum Publishers and asked her if Atheneum would consider publishing a picture book of Petrouchka. Jean Kari agreed, and the book was published In 1980, with Macmillan of Canada agreeing to publish it for the Canadian market. With Petrouchka, Elizabeth had founda story that brought together two themes that she dearly loved:puppetry and ballet.She worked hard on the colour relationships that would best convey the moods and feelings of the story:for instance, the different shades of blue and purple which are used to depict the evening scenes, or the gloom and loneliness of Petrouchka in his cell contrast effectively with the brilliant reds and greens of the Moor's cell.All the characters, as well as the set pieces, are made from linoleum prints which are put together In a collage.

Elizabeth said: 9 played with cut-out characters of Petrouchka, the Moor and the Ballerina, moving their legs, arms and bodies trying to find the right gestures.... When we observe the pictures they remindus of paper cut-out characters that can be animated as in a puppet performance or animated film*(*Words and Images" 293-95).

Elizabeth Cleaver was an artist of picture books of international acclaim. Her pictures and books have been shown in exhibitions around the world.

She left an outstanding legacy and for generations to come, children and adults will continue to read and enjoy her books. She used to say:"I'm just doing what I feel is ri2ht; I'm doing what I love to do."

Her style was right for her what she chose to illustrate was right for her.

Before proceeding with the filmstrip I would like to mention that Elizabeth left In her will the original fund of $10,000 for an award to be named The Elizabeth MrazikCleaver Canadian Picture Book Award and to be

15 administered by the Canadian Section of IBBY. By establishing this award, Elizabeth hoped to encourage excellence In the area of the Canadian picture book and to give, in some small measure, financial support to Canadian illustrators.

National Library of Canada

Notes

1How Summer Came to Canada; The Mountain Goats of Temlaham, Canadian Wonder Tales; Love and Kisses Heart Book; The Witch of the North:Folk Tales of French Canada; The Loon's Necklace; The Fire Stealer: Petrouchka; Afig; The New Wind Has Wings: Poems from Canada; and The Enchanted Caribou.

Works Cited

ChHdcraft How and Why Library.Vol 1. n.p.:Field Enterprises Educational Corp., 1973.

Cleaver, Elizabeth.Correspondence, Baker Lake Project.Elizabeth Cleaver Collection:Illustrations and Related Material.National Library of Canada, Ottawa.

. Idea to image: The Journey of a Picture Book." The Lion and the Unicorn 7/8 (1983-84): 156.

. Illustration.Perspectives 22 decembre 1973.

. 'Words and Images:Investigation into the literal and Simbolic Illustration of a Text.'M.A. Thesis.Concordia U, 1980.

Rev. Times-Canada 18 Mar. 1983: n.p.

16 1987 ChLA AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS

PHOENIX AWARD:

Leon Garfield for Smith (Constable, 1967; Pantheon, 1967; Penguin, 1968; Dell, 1987)

CHLA SCHOLARSHIP AWARD:

David H. Jackson, "The Reception of R. L Stevenson's Fiction, 1883-1894"

Mark I. West, "The Grenville Tennessee Censorship Case"

THE WESTON WOODS MEDIA SCHOLARSHIP:

John Cech, "Crossover Creations: The Films of Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen"

CRITICISM AWARD FOR BEST ARTICLE:

Hamlda Bosmajian, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Other Excremental Visions." The Lion and the Unicorn, 9 (1985): 36-49.

CRITICISM AWARD FOR BEST BOOK

Neil Philip for A Fine Anger: A Critical Introduction to the Work of Alan Garner. London: Collins, 1981.

Samuel Pickering, Jr. (honorable mention) forsieweeidQLhn Lk jreeeilln'Boo kin Eighteenth Century England. Knoxville:University of Tennessee P, 1981.

17 THE PHOENIX AWARD is given to the author,or the estate of the author, of a book for children first published twenty years earlier which did not wina major award at the time of its publication but which, from the perspective of time, is deemed worthy of special recognition for its literary quality.

The Recipient of THE 1987 PHOENIX AWARD

SMITH by Leon Garfield

(Constable, 1967; Pantheon, 1967; Penguin, 1968; Dell Yearling, 1987)

Scrawny, scroungy 18th century London street urz;:iln Smith picksan old gentleman's pocket of a document, then observes the man killed for thevery paper Smith now possesses, whose contents ironically, being illiterate, he cannot read. His efforts to learn to read and to evade the assassins hot on his trail lead him througha convoluted, action-filled, carefully controlled Dickensian plot.It offers a full measure of amazing characters, close encounters, treachery, connivance, and villainy, for grandly entertaining and thematically provocative reading from suspenseful beginning to surprising and thoroughly satisfyita conclusion.

Previous Winners The Marlst Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff (Welch, 1965; Oxford, 1975; Penguin, 1983)

Queenie Peavy by Robert Burch (Viking, 1966; Dell Yearling, 1975)

Each year an elected committee of ChIA members considers nominations made by Members and others interested n promoting high critical standards in literature for children. The 1987 Phoenix Award Commiftee members are Alethea Helbig, Chair, Eastern Michigan University; Mary Ake, Littleton, Colorado, public Schools; Agnes Perkins, Eastern Michigan University; Peter Neumeyer, San Diego State University; and Mark West, University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Acceptance: 1987 Phoenix Award by Leon Garfield

Ladies and gentlemen, first of allI want to thank you for the honour you have done me by awarding the Phoenix to Smith, not feast because It puts me in the company of Rosemary Sutcliff and Bob Burch.If prizes are to be valued according to the quality of their recipients, then the Phoenix stands very high indeed.

At the moment, I feel at the wrong end of a postcard, inasmuch as my sentiments are not so much, 'Wish you were here,' as, 'Wish I were there!" So I must remain a disembodied voice.But perhaps that is best for a writer.Books, I feel, once written, belong to the reader; and the writer should mind his own business and let the reader's imagination take what It wants.I remember once talking to a school about Smith. There was a boy, a fidgeting, restless, disagreeablelooking boy, who when at last permitted to speak, announced that Smith was the book for him. My opinion of him went up and I saw that. far from being disagreeable, he was a most sensitive and intelligent boy, blessed with discrimination and good judgment. Then he went on to tell me why he had liked the book, and, giving way to enthusiasm, he launched upon a splendid exposition of the story, improving on it at several points.Finality, exhausted as much by his own invention as mine, he concluded by saying that It was a very good book and I ought to read it.

I believe It was the same boy-although I like to think It wtts another,-for a writer always likes to multiply the number of his admirers-who explained why he thought that Smith was a book that had something in it of value for everybody. There was, he,said, pietpocketing for boys and sewing for girls.

Smith was a book that cost me a great deal of tabour to write.It was my third book; and, as the two previous ones had been first-person narratives, my editor, Grace Hogarth, thought it time I grew up and left the nursery of 'I' for the grown-up world of 'he'.I was thrown into a panic. No conger could I hide my historical ignorance under the convenience of seeing only what one pair of eyes would see.Mistakes made by a first-person are mistakes made by a character, and, to the charitably- minded, can seem deliberate. But mistakes made in the third pers..,a are mistakes made by the writer himself. So I had to work ;.--ard and do a great deal more research, for which I war, fitted neither by inclination nor training.Because I never knew where for look precisely for what I wanted, I stumbled upon many an item of queer tind out-of-the-way 'nformation when looking in quite the wrong place.In fact, many of the episodes In Smith arose from just ct.tch chance encounters.I only forma out about the ventilators in Newgate Prison because I was looking up something else; ma, although I kept to my original Intention to have Smith escape under his sister's skirts, I couldn't resist using the ventilators as well.

I still do research M the same haphazard way. Sometimes people ask me why I don't employ a researcher and save myself time and trouble. The answer Is that, apart from the cost, research for a storyteller is like the quest for the right husband or wife. You don't know what you're looking for until you find IL

There nowlI think I've talked enough. I'm sure the bar is open, and you all have better things to do. In conclusion, while thanking you again, let me remark on the paradox of awarding a pipesmoker the Phoenix. Far from rising from the ashes, the ashes most frequently arise from mel

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20 The remarks of Mark West:

In Smith, Leon Garfield explores the underside of eighteenth-century England.It is a book about pickpockets, prisoners, and an srray of other characters who exist on the fringes of society.In The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris, published in 1971, Garfield returns to eighteenth-cernery England, but this time his characters are a bit more affluent, If not more respectable. The central characters are two ivalive-year-old boys:Harris, a clever but mischievous son of a prominent physician, and Bostock, a not-so-clever son of a retired ship captain.Like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Harris and Bostock have a dose but somewhat lopsided friendship. The two are nearly inseparable, but it is usually Harris who takes the lead. One dny their teacher happens to mention that the Spartans sometimes exposed their unwanted infants to the elements, and Hams finds this idea intriguing. He decides to try it out with his baby sister, Adeth'..:le.It is not that he wants to dispose of her, he explains to Bostock; he just wants to see if she will be taken in by a kindly wolf or some other wild animal. They leave little Adelaide in a wooded area where she is soon discovered by a young woman and her suitor. Much to the suitors chagrin, the young woman decides to rescue Adelaide. What follows is a hilarious comedy of errors complete with a duel, a love affair and a mysterious private investigator who misinterprets every clue he unearths.It is a lively and amusing book about two lively and amusing boys.

Eight years after the publication of The Strange Affaii of Adelaide Harris, Garfield published a second book about these boys. The English edition bears the title Bostock and Harris while the American edition is called The Night of the Comet.In this book, the boys have aged a year and are beginning to take an interest in girls. Bostock has a crush on Harris's sister Mary, but he has no idea how to -win her affections.Harris agrees to help his friend for a price.Bostock's father owns an expensive telescope witch Harris wants in order better to see a comet that will soon pass over England, and he insists that Bostock give him the telescope as payment for his advice.As it turns out, though, Harris's advice is not worth much. Everything he knows about courtship is from an article about the mating habits of animals, and the boys soon leam that girls are not necessarily attracted to the same things that attract females of other species.Like The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris, the book is filled with ridiculous situations and complicated plot twists, but through it all Hanis and Bostock somehow manage to preserve their friendship.

Garfield has dealt/ mastered the art of telling a comedic tale, but not all of his books belong to this genre, and The Apprentices Is one that does not.First published in 1976, this book consists of twelve loosely connected stories, all of which deal with the experiences of apprentices living in eighteenth-century London. These young people work for a variety of masters, including a lamplighter, a midwife, ar,i a pawnbroker. Most of these apprentices are not quite as destitute as Smith, but they tend to have more in common with Smith than with Harris and Bostock.Like Smith, they do not have happy and carefree childhoods. For seven years, they must spend most of their time at work.Still, as Garfield makes clear, they are more than the jobs that they perform. They are also emotional beings, and it is upon this aspect of their lives that most of the stories are focused.In "Moss and Blister," for example, Garfield describes the bitter disappointment that one ambitious apprentice feels upon teaming that his master's wife has finally given birth to a baby boy. The apprentice had planned to marry one of the master's daughters and eventually inherit the business, but with a son in the picture his hopes for a secure future instantly evaporatL..

In all three of these books, Garfield shows that he is as concerned with the complexities of human nature as he is with the complexities of English social history.This is one of the reasons why his historical fiction so often succeeds in touching the hearts of his readers.

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21 Remarks of Taimi Ranta:

Leon Garfield, a prolific author for nearly a quarter-century. has become recognized as a leading British historical novelist for young people, surpassed only by Rosemary Sutcliff.Often his setting has been the eighteenth century, his atmosphere Dickensiar., his characters experiencing a rags-to-riches change. However, in the early 1970s Garfield turned to retellings of Greek mythology and in the early and middle 1980s to picture books, these often retellings of Bible stories.

in 1970 (U.S. 1971), he published his Carnegie Award-winning The God Beneath the Sea and in 1973 The Golden Shadow. Both were co-authored by Edward Blishen, a man well-versed in Greek myths, and an editor and friend.

The God Beneath the Sea is a retelling of Greek myths, framed with the two violent expulsions of Hephaestus from Olympus by each c. ais cruel and angry parents. The two authors attempt to restructure the collection of myths into a continuous narrative. They divide their work into three sections:The Making of the Gods,' The Making of Man," and "Gods and Me.'

In 'Part One: The Making of the Gods," Garfield and Blishen begin with the account of the ugly infant Hephaestus' expulsion from the heavens when his mother Hera rejects him. The authors follow the myth found in the Iliad which makes Hephaestus the first child of Hera and Zeus and has him cast out of heaven and down into the depths of the sea by his mother because of his monstrous deformities. The goddesses of the sea, Thetis and Eurynome, become his guardians, protecting and raising the deformed child. As they tell him the history of the gods beginning with the birth of the Titans and continuing through the birth of his own brothers and sisters, they reveal the history or Olympus.Part One concludes with Ares' birthday party when Hephaestus is restored to Olympus and is granted the beautiful Aphrodite, the magical goddess of desire (72), as his wife, which follows closely the story found in the Odyssey.

' Part Two: The Making of Man' recounts Prometheus' creation of man from day. Prometheus, in defiance, does not follow Zeus' order to destroy his creation, but instead gives man the gift of fire.Zeus, greatly angered, does not strike out against Prometheus immediately, but rather bestows on him the gift of lovely Pandora as a wife. Through her, mankind will suffer opposition of their own passions as they mingle with the gods. Prometheus is then thrown into chains and besieged by the vicious vulture who is to torment him by day.

' Part Three: Gods and Man' relates the mingling of gods with mankind. The bulk of this section includes the retelling of the story of Persephone, the child of Demeter and Zeus, and her fate to live in the underworld with dark Hades, and that of Autolycus, child of Chione and Hermes, and his rivalry with Sisyphus.Garfield and Blishen conclude the work with Zeus' overthrow by Hrta and their children. With the help of the sea goddess Thetis and the hundred-handed giant Briareus, Zeus is treed and wreaks revenge on his wife and children. Zeus then flings Hephaestus, who is sympathetic to Hera's plight, out of Olympus again. When readers have finished the book, they have been exposed to a sweeping narrative from the Titans to the birth of Odysseus and the building of Troy.

This piece of fiction is written in a poetic style befitting the passionate tales it relates. The ugly and violent passions of the Titans in Part One are equalled by the tender and compassionate emotions tett by Prometheus for his little creatures in Part Two. The authors weave the two worlds of gods and men together briefly in Part Three. Although the beauty of their style is appreciated by some, Garfield and Blishen frequently sacrifice clarity in an effort to link so many myths into a flowing narrative.Often too many characters create confusion, and the text has to be read slowly, with frequent references to Hamilton or Butfinch for clarification.Its swift pace, the compacting of so much in so short a work, and the authors' seeming assumption that the reader already has substantial knowledge of mythology limit the book's audience.

The Golden Shadow by Garfield and Blishea is a more satisfactory experience for a wider range of readers. This recreations of Greek legends is easier to follow and Is quite beautifully written. The unity of the book is provided by 'a poet, a storyteller, who collected tales that he wove into ballads for the entertainment of any who'd clothe and feed him" (12). The Golden Shadow traces the history of Herades from birth to death, giving an account

22 of tour of his twelve labors (the slaying of the Nemean Lion, the killing of the Hydra, the cleaning of the stables of Augeas, and the abduction of the dog Cerberus from Hades). The prophecy that Thetis would bear a son greater than his father is witnessed by the storyteller and is also woven throughout the story of Herades. As the storyteller spends his life following the life of Herades, he himself longs to understand the prophecy he has witnessed and to actually see a god. He eloquently bemoans the fact that "the pursuit of knowledge had blinded him" and he has 'lost the power to behold the divine:and worse, almost the strength to believe in it' (16).

Although the storyteller is a literary device to link the myths being retold and gives unity to the work, he also supplies the mode through which the theme of the work is developed. He exemplifies man's constant searching for the gods, who are always slightly out of reach. Only in death does the storyteller finally see Hermes, who comes to cagy him away. Hermes reassures the storyteller that his lifelong hero, Herades, has been restored to life on Olympus and properly rewarded for his lieftime of struggles.

This work Is well-crafted, and the constant presence of Zeus, "the golden shadow,' is artfully presented. For good readers at the high school level who are interested in mythology, this could be a rewarding reading experience.

Neither The God Beneath the Sea nor The Golden Shadow can be thought of as source material, and, as Clara Hutton Pointed out In Library Joumal they do not take the place of Co lum, Benson, Hamitton, and Graves (2137). But, then in the Afterward of the British edition by Longman, the authors pointed out that they wanted to produce 'a piece of fresh fiction out of some of the oldest tales in the world.' That they did.

Mixed reactions have been elicited by the two titles.In Contemporary Literary Criticism, is is noted that 'The modem interpretations of Greek myths which Garfield wrote with Edward Blishen have been especially criticized for their loftiness and for losing the significance of the myths in the psychological theorizing of the authors' (215). In the New Statesman, Alan Garner called The God Beneath the Sea 'very bad.' it is almost impossible to read, let alone assess," he added (606-07). The Bulletin of the Center of Children's Books recommended its reading for grades eight and up, and described it generally as 'a stunning book' with 'a fluent imaginative style" (56).

The God Beneath the Sea won the prasligious Camegie Award in 1971 and was one of the most controversial of all Camegie Medal Awards to date. When asked in an interview if it was ironic that he had won the coveted prize far The God Beneath the Sea and not for one of his other books, Garfield replied, 'Aggravating rather than ironic' (204.)

M of Garfield's five picture books are oversized and extravagantly illustrated. The first, Fair's Fair in 1981 (U.S. 1983), is one with his Dickensian touch, set in snowy London right before Christmas. Two orphaned street watts are both led to an elegant, deserted mansion by a large fierce-looking black dog. There they eat mysteriously- appearing meals, together dean and take care of the place, and even share their food with others. On Christmas Eves two sinister-looking men appear with the seeming intent to burglarize, which the children avert. The happy ending proves them to be the ow.er and his lawyer who conveniently i.ave been looking for two such kind, brave, honest, and generous children to adopt.Fair's Fair is a sentimental book with large, conventional, detailed illustrations in full color by S. D. Schindler to set the mood for a satisfying story, especially around the Christmas season.

Then came three picture books that are retellings of Bible stories:ISIgi Nimrod's Tower, The Writing on the Wall, and The Kim In the Garden. They are all illustrated in grandiose style by Michael Bragg.

King Nir,Irc.ri's Tower is based on the story of the Tower of Babel from the King James version of the Bide.In this unusual variation, the author Juxtaposes a small boy who is trying very hard to make friends with an unruly puppy and the Tower rising gradually in the background. God doesn't want to destroy the proud Nlmrod's Tower because the lad might be injured, but rather He brings about the familiar confusing of tongues. The boy finally succeeds In persuading the puppy to accompany him home and the Tower is abandoned. The full-color illustrations are striking but not in keeping wtth the time of the story.'The boy and the workmen resemble figures from Breughel, and God looks similar to William Blake's depiction of him' (510).

23 The Writing on the Wall is based on the Belshazzar story of the writing on the wall and Daniel's Interpretation of the words. Here, too, as in King Nimrod's Tower, the events are seen through the eyes of a small boy. Sam, a kitchen boy, is more interested in an old hungry cat, Mordecai, than in the earth-shaking events occurring around him.Bold illustrations in double-page spreads depict the details of the castle, the gross eating habits of the gluttonous guests at something that resembles a medieval banquet more than an ancient feast. They are frequently and annoyingly interrupted by the text.Neither the boy-cat story nor the Belshazzar story stands up well on its own.

The lGng in the Garden is an adaptation of :tie Old Testament story of King Nebuchadnezzar's madness. little, spunky Abigail finds the absent, humiliated, bedraggled king in her garden, groveling in the dirt, eating her grass and flowers, and frightening her fish. She takes him in hand and helps him regain some self- esteem. Many of the illustrations are luminous, with yellow and clearwater green dominating. The events alternate between the garden and the castle, which would be difficult for young children. As Rebecca Ray writes in School Library Joumal, The invented detail of this story adds nothing useful or beautful to the original in the Book of Daniel. The picture book audience Is not ready for this 'art imitates life' approach' (54).

Although at first glance, the Bible retellings look inviting and inspiring, upon closer scrutiny and evaluation they do not offer the bedrock essence of these stories found in good Bible story collections. Sumptuous illustrations, inclusion of distracting little subplots with chi" characters, additional narrative details with something of a contemporary flavor all tend to make these less than really successful retellings of well-known Bible stories (Ray 54).

Garfield's latest picture book is The Wedding Guest, illustrated by the very versatile Charles Keeping, but is currently unavailable in the United States.It uses some elements from the old Sleeping Beauty story 'to embroider the truism that man's love is divided between the 'very type of normal and easy' and, if not sinister, at least the strange and unattainable' (Julia Briggs, limes Literary Supplement, 29 Mar. 1985: 350). Jack and plain Jill are to be married but he hasn't invited his old nurse to the wedding. Her present draws him from his comfortable wedding preparations and leads him on a strange joumey to seek that second bride, a journey on which he encounters the beautiful princess covered with dust.After complications, he does in the end marry his Jill, but the reconciliation of two such fundamentally opposed inpulses runs the risk of being reductive or inconsistent (Briggs, 350).It seems that to instill an old familiar tale with new meaning is not as easy as one might think.

All in all, Leon Garfield's retellings of Greek rmrthology and his picture books have not been as well-received as the body of his work. When he is in his own element, that of historical fiction, his work has more vigor, direction, drawing power, and sense of audience than when he collaborates or when he attempts to give an established story a contemporary twist.

Works Cited

Briggs, Julia.Rev. The Wedding Guest. times Literary Supplement 29 Mar. 1985: 350.

Garner, Alan.rev. The God Beneath the Sea. New Statesman 6 Nov. 1970: 606-07.

Hutton, Clara.Rev. The God Beneath the Sea and The Golden Shadow. Library Joumal 15 June 1971: 2137.

'Leon Garfield.'Contemporary Literary Criticism 12: 215.

Rev. King Nimrod's Tower. Horn Book Oct. 1982: 510.

Rev. The God Beneath the Sea.Bulletin of the Center of Children's Books. 12 Dec. 1971: 56.

Ray, Rebecca. Rev. The King in the Garden. School Library Joumal Aug. 1985: 54.

Wintle, Justin and Emma Fisher. The Pied Pipers. Paddington, 1974.

24 The remarks of Agnes Perkins:

Smith, Leon Garfield's scruffy, undersized, ignorant hero of his 1967 novel, is a twelve-year-old pickpocket in 18th century London. Smith (he seems to have no other name) is clever and quick-"a rat was a snail beside Smith, and the most his thousand victims ever got of him was the powerful whiff of his passing and a cold draught in their dexterously emptied pockets.' The chance selection of a country gentleman as his victim leads to a maze of threats and betrayals, for after skillfully lifting the contents of the old fellow's pocket, Smith ducks into a doorway and sees the man murdered and his body searched. After mingling with the crowd and escaping, Smith looks to see that his prize is a document, valuable enough to be murdered for, which he cannot interpret, being illiterate.Because no one of his acquaintance who has skill with letters can also be trusted, Smith sets about trying to find someone to teach him to read.

Before this can be accomplished, Smith is fingered as the holder of the document, and, pursued by the murderers, two sinister men in brown, he runs through London's back alleys and sooty courts, finally eluding them and bumping into a lost blind man, Mr. Mansfield, magistrate, whom the boy in pity leads to his home. Set up in the Mansfield household as assistant groom, with the magistrate's daughter teaching him to read, Smith is accuL3d by an attorney of having killed the old country gentleman, and Mr. Mansfield, whom the boy calls "Old Blind Justice,' regretfully sends him to Newgate Gaol. From then on their lives are inextricably bound together, with Smith escaping from prison, saving the magistrate in a blinding snowstcrn on Finch ley Common, and later refusing to abandon him when the real villains discover them in the cemetery at Prick ler's Hill.

The story has a breakneck pace, with tense scenes and melodramatic flourishes.Besides following the conventions of the eighteenth century novel, rich in language and labyrinthine plot, it skillfully enlists the reader's sympathy for an initially unsr.vory hero. Scenes of the grimy area of London around St. Paul's and Ludgate Hill, as well as the pristitself, are strongly sensory, particularly in smell, and the biting cold of Smith's nights in the streets and on the common is equally vivid. The novel also unsentimentally demonstrates the theme that blind justice must be tempered with compassion.

Smith has been chosen by the Children's Literature Association Phoenix Award Committee as the best book published twenty years ago which did not at that time receive any major award but which has stood the test of the passing years.It is certainly one of his best novels, showing him as a skillful plotter, a brilliant stylist, and an author capable of inventing a protagonist to whom a reader is drawn emotionally set in a story that considers a theme of depth and complexity.

Garfield was born in Brighton in 1921, studied art, and, after serving from 1940 to 1946 in the Royal Army Medical Corps, worked as a biochemical technician for more than twenty years. His writing, which began in 1964 with Jack Holbom, a sea story, has been protift. and varied. Among other honors, ne has won the Whitbread Award, the Guardian Award, and the Carnegie Medal; two of his other books have been on the Carnegie Commended list, three have been honor books for the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and seven have been included on the Horn Book Fanfare lists.He has written biography, picture books, retellings of myths and Bible stories, ghost stories, and novels that range from the grim and melodramatic Drummer Boy to the high comedy of the Bostock and Harris books.

Two of his novels that have much in common with Smith are Black Jack, first published in 1968, and John Diamond, published in 1980 and reissued in the United States under the title Footsteps.If Smith can be viewed as a study of the conflicting demands of justice and compassion, Black Jack might be said to be about human bondage, the fears, obligations, and emotions that hold people together against their logical judgment. When Mrs. Gorgandy, a "Tyburn widow" who makes a good thing of claiming bodies of those hanged without any true grieving family and selling them to physicians, needs help handling the huge body of the ruffian Black Jack, she calls upon the pity of a young draper's apprentice, Tolly Dorking, and then tricks him into sitting with the corpse while she rushes off to dicker with prospective buyers. To Tolly's horror, the body begins to move and make some choking noises and-by signs-to get him to pull a silver tube from its throat, which Black Jack has inserted himself to thwart the hangman. From then on Tolly is in the power of the giant, linked to him by mutual fear, Black Jack's that Tolly

25 will turn him In to be hanged property, and To Ily's that Black Jack will murder him or other innocent victims if he tries to get away.

When Black Jack puts a large stone in a turn in the road where it will certainly cause a coach to upset, planning to get a reward for helping right It or to rob the passengers, the first to overturn spills out an unusual cargo.It is Dr. Jones, who runs a private madhouse in Islington, and his newest inmate, a mentally disturbed girl named Belle Carter, bel.ng sent by her wealthy family to be kept out of sight so that her older sister can many into a titled family without their secret shame being discovered.Belle escapes to a nearby wood, Toffy goes to find her, and together they wander on, Belle alternating between sweet, childish prattle and fits of violent temper. They Join a traveling fair, where Dr. Carmody, who sells the EUxir of Youth, takes them in, convinces that his quack medicine can cure the gilt To To Ily's horror, Black Jack joins the group, planning to take Belle to the madhouse tocollect a reward, but Toffy discovers the giant's weak point:he is terrified of madness and dare not take the gill ty force. As Be 3e's mind clears with good treatment, Toffy finds himself a victim of his own contending emotions, dreading the fate of being caretaker of a madwoman yet drawn to Belle with what becomes deep and overpowering love.His feelings toward Black Jack are also contradictory, made up of fear and hate and a longing for admiration rather than scorn from the huge villain.Through the rest of the book these three break away from and are drawn back to each other in a complex plot that includes blackmail, horrifying scenes in the madhouse, and the public panic as an earthquake seems to presage the end of the world prophesied by a street preacher.

John Diamond is equally melodramatic, with stronger elements of mystery.Night after night, twelve- year -old William Jones has been awakened by the sound of footsteps in the room below his, as his dying father paces the floor. Stricken by conscience, he believes his father is "dying of a worthless son."Hearing the footsteps suddenly stop one night, he creeps down, and his father gives him his gold watch and confesses that he is weighted down by a long-concealed sin:he cheated his friend and partner, Alfred Diamond, and fears he may have caused Diamond's death. Next day he is dead, and William's obnoxious uncle accuses the boy of stealing the watch. Frantic with grief and hatred, William runs off to London, determined to find Mr. Diamond, who he is sure, will somehow vindicate him.

In London, he becomes involved with a number of Dickensian characters and blunders through a series of ludicrous situations, sinister intrigues, and chilling adventures in which no one is quite what he seems. William, whose first-person narration depicts him as far from perfect, Is a naive and sympathetic character, and Garfield's style, as always, is highly individual and skiltful. The theme that appearances are often far different from reality is one that recurs in many of the author's books, as does the mixture of melodramatic adventures lightened byironic, often biting, wit.

These three novels exemplify one aspect of Garfield's writing. Even if he had not achieved distinction In other types of books, these alone would be enough to merit a memorable place in children's literature.

26 The remarks of Alethea iielbig:

Among Garfield's other books are several eerie and mysterious ghost stories. Two are full-length novels: Devil-in-the-Foq, which concerns an unusual family of traveling actors and won the first Guardian award, and The Drummer Bov, which strips away the glamour from war. Two novelette-length books improvise upon the Faustian legend:Mr. Corbett's Ghost and The Ghost Downstairs.All display the Garfield hallmarks of eighteenth century settings; distinctive, exuberant, sensory style; intricate ploys full of carefully controlled, deliberately melodramatic events that lead to unexpected endings; ironic humor; moral complexities; and elemental themes of greed, hatred, vengeance, illusion, and deception.

Like most Carfierd books Devil -in- the -Foq defies brief summarization. George, the fourteen- year -oia narrator, enjoys life as the eldest son in the Treet family, an irrepressible troupe of strolling players praised with immodest candor by George as some of 'the most talented personages in England.' One misty November a 'dark and devilish' Stranger calls in the "unwholesome bargain eating away at my father's soul' and plunges George into the strange, new role of real-life heir apparent to family -proud Sir John Dexter.Sir John is embroiled in a Cain and Abel feud with his brother, Richard, whom George soon encounters skulking in a copse on the Dexter estate, a tattered, worn, and pathetic fugitive from Newgate, certainly not the villain George expected. Aiding and advising Richard is the curiously ambiguous Mrs. Montagu, sometime necromancer to Lady Dexter.Mrs. Montagu has called up from the grave an infant she swore was the spirit of George Dexter,' now seemingly a 'wicked, wicked ghost' that has prevaricated about his identity.

Though the book's center doesn't produce the emotional pull promised by the beginning and the conclusion is overly extended, a full measure of excitement transpires before George and the reader make important discoveries.In addition to learning who his father is, George finds that things in the real world are not always as they seem and that the accoutrements of a gentleman do not in themselves a gentleman make. Vain, posturing, ambitious, a self-professed genius, George, to his credit, tries hard to please the Dexters.Given the challenge, he seeks to ferret out the truth, though the effort endangers his life.

He has mixed feelings about flamboyant, unpredictable Mister Treet, the book's other most interesting figure. Catching George's bitter uncertainty about returning to Mister Treet, when the latter has been acknowledged George's true father, Lady Dexter helps the youth put things in perspective:

'Now you've discovered Mister Treet is not the blackest of villains, dear George, don't be mortified that he's not the brightest of saints, either!There's something in between, you know! So forgive himfor I'm sure he's a great man in spite of it aHle (203)

And George forgives and accepts his father for the good he knows is there, puts the man's shortcomings out of his mind, and rejoices to leave the manor and return to the troupe, his 'golden past to be... [his] golden future as well,' and the eight Treet geniuses are together again.

The Drummer Boy also involves delusion, illusion, and deception. Complex in ideas like Devil, stylistically and structurally it is more tightly knit and hence more emotionally engaging.Charlie Samson, army drummer boy, and five red-coats are the sole survivors of ten thousand soldiers 'quite harvested by ambush' on a battlefield in France. They make their way through their fallen comrades, he drumming as they 'talked and robbed and talked and robbed.' Haunted by the specter of a dead soldier, Charlie travels to London to deliver a message to one Miss Sophia Lawrence, who turns out to be the daughter of the defeated general.Hopelessly enamored of her, Charlie perjures himself to save her father, then discovers that this idol also has feet of clay.His salvation comes from unexpected quarters:the opportunistic surgeon, Mister Shaw, who has conceived an ambiguous fondness for Charlie, and Charity, Miss Sophla's sensible, forthright serving wench, whom Charlie has hitherto scorned. The whole culminates in a smashing chase in New Forest and concludes with Charlie splitting his drumskin, which signifies entry into manhood, and then leaving arm-inarrn with Charity.

Irony supports themes well but distances us from the protagonist.Charlie lacks definition; he is less interesting than his flamboyant counterpart, George Treet.Faceless, stupidly innocent, he is a shallow type who

27 perpetuates his own deception.Having gone to war to find something to be worthy of," he teams the survivors among the soldiers he idolized are alive because they fled and hid in ditches during the fighting, the general to whom he dedicated his drumming is pompous, self-aggrandizing, and unnaturally attached to his beautiful daughter, and the beauty of the daughter to whom Charlie has given his untarnished devotion masks a cruel, haughty, life- destroying ugliness.Yet Charlie remains doggedly romantic throughout. When he changes, he changes expectedly, and his entry into adulthood, though motivated, seems abrupt.His departure from the forest with Charity "on his armand charity deep in his heart",the novel's final wordsusher him into another romantic .vorld, a happy-ever-after conclusion to the novel that offers hope but disquiets the thinking reader.

Scenes are memorable, their pictures sharp, their language energetic and rich with imagery. The ironically poetic and visually vivid opening in present tense--"the scarlet men are marching. The hillside is in bloom with them ... mounting as if to capture the sun,"--establishes theromantic tone, sets in stark relief the horror of the ambush and the earthiness of the body robbing soon to follow, and contributes universality.Mister Shaw, the grotesquely comic surgeon, "gray and fat, with little frightened eyes," wastes no ti: to as he prudently scours the battlefield "gathering teeth, fine, fresh teeth. Teeth for the toothless back home. Teeth for the ladies; teeth for the gentlemen at upwards of two pound ten a gnasher" (16). Though not without shortcomings, Drummer stands out for the skill with which it is composed.

In Devil and Drummer, the supernatural forces provide atmosphere.In Mr. Corbett's Ghost and The Ghost Downstairs, two finely cut gems that outshine these two predecessors, the ghosts become functioning characters in their own right.Mr. Corbett's Ghost echoes the tale of Scrooge as it plays twists and tums on the theme of unholy bargain. One New Year's Eve, willful, defiant Benjamin Partridge, apothecary's apprentice and aspiring celebrant, is ordered by his hard-driving master, Mister Corbett, to deliver a mixture to a little, old, black-garbed man about whom there is "an unmistakable smell of graveyards.' Obliged to walk three miles through the dark and cold, despairing and raging ("Nails in your coffin, Mister Corbett"), Benjamin repairs to a secluded house on the heath and concludes with the same little old man a bargain for Mister Corbett's death. When the corpse and then the ghost become unmanageable, he opts for an unselfish act that redeems both him and Mister Corbett, and Benjamin welcomes the New Year, relieved to have his master in the flesh again. He has leamed that the cost of irresponsible action may come high and that forgiveness is sweeter than revenge.

We feel little sympathy for complaining, surly Benjamin at story's start, and still less when he Initiates his dark agreement. But the disciprlim of suffering he undergoes changes his outlook substantially and draws us to him. We disapprove his attempts to justify himself.You brought it on yourself, Mister Corbett. You were as hard as iron," he asserts unhappily. We think better of him when remorse sets in and he acts compassionately for the piteous ghost. When he realizes the ghost can "give but terror and freezing cold" and that there is no place for the two of them to go "in their misery and their shame," we see how much he has changed and share his suffering.

At the very end, when Benjamin "begins to wonder whether his dark venture had been a dream,' we, too, wonder. The third person focus is so tight it gives the effect of "I" narration. Maybe, we think, this has all taken place in Benjamin's head, a figment of the over-wrought imagination of a rebellious adolescent.But so vividly does Garfield draw the ghost, so tormented is the specter ("Hell is cold ...," he pleads), so clearly realized Is the ironic New Year's Eve party at which Benjamin helps the ghost warm himself at the fire and thus is revealed as a murderer, that we have no difficulty accepting the events as actually happening, the ghost as real as Benjamin. Along with Benjamin we conclude that the evil we do has its origin within us.

The macabre in the allegorical sense hinted at in Mister Corbett's Ghost is more fully realized in The Ghost Downstairs.Mr. Fishbane, new neighbor below, reeks of sulphur.Since he also reeks of wealth, Mr. Fast, sharp- minded solicitor's clerk, cultivates his friendship. Supremely confident of his ability to outwit the old man legally, he draws up a contract in which in retum for a million pounds he will give the old man his soul and seven years off the end of his life, a contract signed not in blood, but with beetroot juice, and hence 'red in tooth and clause." Even though the fine print specifies the first seven years of his life, Mr. Fast soon feels uneasy with his bargain. He notices a dark and shadowy shape accompanying his benefactor, wh:- n slowly and horribly materializes as a sad- eyed, pallid-faced, little boy dressed in an old-fashioned sailor suit,Mr. Fast h:As bargained away his own childhood, and with it his hopes and dreams, rendering-ironically-the million pounds of no value. What good is money without

28 dreams for it to satisfy?Dismay and fear progress relentlessly into terror when Mr. Fishbane grants the ghostchild's fondest wish, to drive a train, which to his horror Mr. Fast soon realizes is a death train.He halts it, saving the passengers at the cost of his own life, and is thus redeemed from his unholy bargain.

Mr. Fast is more repulsive at the beginning than is Benjamin Partridge. The grasping solicitor's clerk appears to have no redeeming qualities. We are introduced to him in a sardonically witty passage:

Two devils lived In Mr. Fastenvy and loneliness. Together they gnawed at him, drained the color from his face, the luster from his eyes and the charity from his heart. (3)

A little later we're told that avarice became a "welcome tenant,' too, who 'got on famously with the two devils... all three of them held parties in his head, and dined off Mr. Fishbane's estate" (9).His pride, greed, and arrogance continue to repel us. We dislike him intensely when he attempts to purchase the child's dreams (his own, that is) with the gift of a silver running hoop. The pivotal scene, where we begin to feel sympathy, occurs when he gives his arm to an old woman and helps her through the fog to the train, a Boy Scout act that epitomizes childhood virtue and hints that his discipline of suffering has awakened a decency thrrnant since childhood. When he is convinced that "the phantom child was fixed on destroying him and ... was driving the train to destruction," he undertakes to save the glimpse of the phantom at the controls, through Mr. Fast's anguished plea, "Take everything back! Take all my soulonly stop the train!" thrcugh the poignant death scene, after which the child speaks as father of the man, whispering, 'My son ... oh, my son ...," to conclude with poetic ambiguity.But the end leaves us to ponder the identity of Mr. Fishbane and the phantom child:

'Come, Dennis," murmured the old man. "Come away, my dear." Then this weird pairthe shabby old man and the little boy in the sailor suitdrifted away from the glowing scene and seemed to mount the embankment and so dissolve in the upper reaches of the night. "Where shall we go now?" whispered the little phantom, its pale face smiling up into the old man's. "God knows," answered Mr. Fishbane, and his beard streamed out to catch the stars. (107)

Perhaps Mr. Fishbane isn't the devil at all.Perhaps the only devil is in Mr. Fast's baser nature.Perhaps, as in Mr. Corbett's Ghost, the only evil people do originates with them.

This brief discussion has merely sampled the surface texture of these four rich and deeply satisfying books. There is no time here to discuss such aspects as tone, color, the orchestration of rhythm and pace, the wit, the wordplay, the imagery a..d their effect on characterization, plotting, and atmosphere.Garfield is a master craftsman, whose work, I believe, has not received the attention it deserves on this side of the Atlantic.His books are simply good reading entertainment. They give us perceptive insights into human nature and the way things are in the world. and at the same time they enhance our appreciation for the delight that beautiful writing brings.

Edited by Alethea Helbig

29 Editing Inuit Literature: Leaving the Teeth in the Gently Smiling Jaws by Robin McGrath

A quick glance around any Canadian chridnin's library or bookstore will reveal a proliferation of books by and about native North Americans. This wee of native material is the result of a realization by parents and educators that native songs and legends "reflect archetypes of world mythology adapted to the Canadian environment" (Whitaker 162). The works help to put non-native children Into harmony with the country of their birth or adoption in a way that stories rooted in Europe, Asia or Africa cannot, and they also help to keep native children In touch with their culture. The use of native oral literature in books invokes a number of complex processes, including transmission, translation, adaptation and editing, processes which should be undertaken with caution and care if the integrity of the original material is to be retained. This paper will look at problems of adapting and editing Inuit literature and will compare several original manuscripts with the English texts that eventually reached the public.

It is important in talking about editing Inuit literature to draw a clear distinction between literature about Inuit and literature la Inuit.An excellent example of an adaptation of Inuit legend, literature about Inutt, is Elizabeth Cleaver's The Enchanted Caribou. Mother is James Houston's Tikta'Lltak.Houston based his story on a real incident, but as he tells us:

The year after Tikta'Liktak returned he and his wife starved to death; he was gone.I never used that in the book because I think it sounds depressing that, after having fought through all that to save himself, he should have died in such an ordinary way as starvation. (qtd. in Stott 7-8)

Houston's story is his own, and he Is free to change or omit the ending. The problem arises when editors change Inuit writers' stories.

A photographic version of the Taqaliktaq story can be found in Peter Pitseolak'sPeople From Our Side. The sub-title is A Life Story With Photographs by Peter Pitseolak and Oral Elloaraphv by Dorothy Eber, the translator of the manuscript section is named, the six interpreters who worked on the interviews are listed, a page of the syllabic manuscript is reproduced on the inside of the cover, and a distinction is made between the original manuscript and later insertions from interviews by the use of italics.I, Nu Hoak, edited by Malurice Metayer, is similarly documented and includes a sample of the original Inuktitut with both a literal translation and the final interpretation so that readers can judge how the work has been aiterea by the editor.

In contrast, Bik and Other Stories of the MacKenzie Eskimos is an example of a book that may appear to be by Inuit but is not.Herbert T. Schwarz devotes almost half of this book to photographs and profiles of the storytellers he met in the Mackenzie Delta, but a careful reading reveals that Schwarz speaks no lnuktitut, several Jf the storytellers spoke very little English, the stories were never tape-recorded, and an interpreter was used for only one of the tales.Schwarz's comment that one story-teller was such a superb actor that "there were times that I did not need to understand Eskimo to comprehend his tale" (69) should be received with some skepticism.Elik is an adapted work but gives the incorrect impression that it has simply been edited.

Authentic literature by Inuit is usually fairly easy to recognize. The storytellers or poets are identified by name or at least by tribal affiliation; the translators are listed; any Interim languLges such as Danish or French are noted; additions are identified as such either through footnotes or the use of italics; and finally, it does no harm If a certain number of inconsistencies of language or narrative development are retained.tf, as an English reader, you understand everything In the work, then it Is probably not the product of an Inuit writer.

Sometimes the changes editors make are so subtle that it is difficult to know if the editor was making a deliberate decision or was just inadvertently shifting the emphasis in a work.Either way, the reader Is left with an incorrect impression of Inuit life.Agnes Nanogak's version of the story of Anikniyak, In her new book More Tales From the Igloo, contains a number of examples of this kind of change. The story tells of a childless couple who had adopted the husband's younger brother. The young man longed for to have a baby, a girl that he could look after, but tr 3 when the wife eventually became pregnant she gave birth to a boy. The father, concerned that his brother might harm the child in his disappointment, instructed his wife to dress the child as a girl.All went well, until the child was old,enough to play outside. One day, when the uncle and child were catching birds, the uncle discovered the deception.

Roy Goose's original translation describes the discovery in this way:

So when the child wanted to peehe helped ft to peeso he found out only then that the child was a little boy instead. (Nanogak ts. 77-8)

The published version reads:

The child went to relieve himself, and the uncle saw that he was not a girl.Only then did the uncle find out that the child was a little boy instead.(Nanogak)

Several of the changes In this text can be justified. The elimination of the word 'so' (taimal), used to punctuate oral narratives, and the substitution of 'relieve' for "pee", are decisions that editors are free to make, particularly when they are working with a rough translation.However ft Is very clear in the original text and in the translation that the uncle is helping a child that he thinks is a girl when it needs to urinate. The edited version distances the uncle "The child went to relieve himself.'

We are told earlier in the manuscript that the uncle 'looked after' the child, but the published version changes looked after to 'protected'.All the descriptions of the uncle's relationship with the child have been changed to fit a non-Inuit stereotype.In reality, Inuit men are extremely nurturing, they are quite comfortable being seen feeding, washing, or 'looking after" babies and small children.Inuit men do not just "protect" childrena word that suggests a man alert to dangerous polar bearsthey look after children, which includes wiping noses and bottoms. A teen-aged boy would not hesitate to help a two year old girl go to the toilet.One suspects that the editor was anxious to eliminate any implication of sexual contact from the story. The translator refers to the child as she when dressed as a girl, but the editor has substituted 'he' or It"; since there is no gender distinction for the second person singular in Inuktitut, the use of female in English might have been accidental but most likely was deliberate and perhaps should have been retained.

The editor of More Tales From the Igloo seems to have had a real aversion to bodily function.In the manuscript version of one story, a man duame a wine pot on a fiery demon but in the book the contents of the pot are unidentified.Motivations that children or adults might understand often disappear in the editing. A beast-fable, In which a crow tricks some wolves into an act of cannibalism, hinges on the fact that the wolves are so appalled that they run outside to try and vomit.Crow hides their parkas and they freeze to death.In the published story the reference to their attempts to vomit is deleted and the wolves run outside for no apparent reason. A beast-fable about an enchanted moose who continues talking to the hunter after he has been killed and skinned provides another example of this editor's fastidiousness.Originally, the moose skin objects to being used as a blanket because the children might wet the bed. Now the moose skin suggests that the children might "get ft dirty.'Surely a reluctance to be peed on is a stronger, more realistic motivation in such a story.

The original manuscript of More Tales From the igloo provides a number of glimpses of Inuit life that are quite intimate but that were deemed inappropriate by the editor.!n one story, a married couple have a serious altercation; the husband goes caribou hunting to calm down. What we are told h that the husband was getting out of the house so as not to beat his wife.He doesn't beat her, however he eventually creates a drop-trap full of worms to kill her but ends up falling into it himself and being consumed. The original comment about why he went hunting is open to two interpretations:either we are being told how to deal appropriately with anger (i.e., go caribou hunting), or we are being told that if rage is suppressed ft will grow. Apparently the editor thinks ft is all right for an Inuk to speak in print about feeding a spouse to a ditch full of worms, but references to wife-beating are verboten. A much milder form of the same censorship has a hunter kill two caribou when in the original story he has killed a caribou cow and her calf.This particular story Is chock-full of murdersit seems that an Inuk Rambo Is acceptable as long as he doesn't shoot Bambl's mother.

f??1 ti $ 32 Editors who are working with modem Inuit literature have a particular responsibility to their authors.Writers such as Markoosie and Alootook Ipellie frequently set their stories in traditional times but they are writing in English and using European narrative techniques. Markoosie's Harpoon of the Hunter, which was edited by James McNeil, displays both the strengths and pitfalls of such a relationship.Markoosie was working as a bush pilot when he wrote the book, and had a somewhat weak background in traditional Inuit skills.McNeil quite property did not attempt to eliminate the romantic love motif In the plot, a European element that some reviewers regarded as a distortion, nor did he want Markoosie to change the abruptly tragic ending In which the hero commits suicide. He did, however, change the heroine's name from Uzzie to Putooktee, and he failed to recognize that musk-oxen do not 'roam the land, living on whatever they can kill' (Markoosie 44), but, as Fred Breummer reminds us, are fairly mild herbivores (v); furthermore, the harpoon of the title has a detachable head which would make it impossible for the hero, Kamik, to repeatedly strike Et polar bear. A knowledgeable anthropologist frequently knows more about the details of traditional camp life than a young Inuk brought up in the contact era.

When McNeil edited Markoosie's next work, Winos o7 Mercy, the situation was somewhat reversed. Markoosie's descriptions of Arctic flying were frequently too detailed and specific for the editor's taste, and the language a little too colloquial.Under McNeil's blue pencil, a sled became a komatik, just as in John Auaruak's work a boat became an Umiak, and Markoosie's village English was cleaned up and dignified. Where a character originally sent a radio message that read: 'Would you tell RCMP I'd like to talk to him" (ts. 12), it now reads 'Would you tell the RCMP man I'd like to talk to him.'Inuit frequently refer to non-natives by the occupation and will address them as Pilot or Teacher or even Co-Op, and since lnktitut does not have articles such as "a" or 'the, these are frequently dropped in English as well.Village English is often colourful and delightful and Inuit writers frequently push familiar words into shapes that those who speak English as a first language would never attempt. Markoosie's sentence:"He switched his eyes to the airspeed indicator,' (ts. 12) becomes: He looked at his instruments" (Markoosie 12), but the notion of the pilot's taking on the characteristics of a machine is lost in this editorial change.

The whole question of whether sex, violence and monsters should be retained in native literature for children is a complex one that is dealt with elsewhere (McGrath, in publication). What is of concern here is that Inuit writers be well served by those who edit them.Often, especially in poetry, editors tend to read too much into fairly simple roatetial.For example, the song "Ptarmigan" by Umanatsiaq gives a delightful imagistic picture of the bird in sprirgtlme, but the last two lines, And right between its buttocks/Sat the sweetest little arse' (Lowenstein 51), can be and probably wasmisunderstood by the editor who was working with Knud Rasmussen's translations from Inuktitut to Danish. An 'itiq" on a person is a bottom; on a bird it is the part that holds the tailfeathers. A bird's "pope's nose' or "parson's nose" is not what is generally understood by the word "arse". A ptarmigan's gig is an oily morsel much enjoyed by Inuit because it is literally sweet.

This tendency for editors t,: iliake the literal abstract is also obvious in a modem poem, "I Ask of Thee by Akulak. The poem takes the form of a traditional dialogue song between parent and child in which the boy asks his father about Me changes he sees happening around him. The child questions the nature of God, the reason for man's inhumanity to man, and, in the last verse, he asks why the animals they usually hunt have disappeared. The father's explanation is that It isthe machines" that have caused the scarcity of animals; the editor has changed "the machines" to the more abstract concept "progress."Machines may represent progress, but surety that is for the reader to interpret, not for the editor to impose.

With more native material reaching children every day, parents and educators must become aware of how to choose books by and about Inuit.Adapters like Houston and Cleaver understand the tradition from which h ey are drawing inspiration, so their works function in the same way that works by storytellers like Amaitok Ipellie, Ise Smiler and Francois Quasa do.Editors like Maurice Metayer, Leonie Kappi and Dorothy Eber treat their authors with intelligence and respect, and interpreters like Anne Hanson and Rose Jeddore consider carefully all the cultural, linguistic and aesthetic aspects of the prose and poetry they are translating.Editors and writers given the opportunity to work with native material must educate themselves so as to produce books as honest to the original material as they can possibly make them, and readers must become more critical of the processes by which stories and songs that originated in the camps of Seekooseelak and Kittigazuit reach us In the south on the printed page.

33 Tautungle Kubliutok, an artist and teacher from Rankin Inlet in the Hudson's Bay area, made a number of tape recordings before her death of stories that she thought would help nonInuit to understand her culture. The following account of early WO contact with white whaling crews serves as a cautionary tale for editors of native legends:

The Big Ship

In the olden days we were a very isolated people, but the people before us were even more isolated. We thought, and understandably so, that we were the only people on earth.Little did we know that there were more people, in the land of the Qablunaaq and all over.

A group of Inuit had their camp set up on the seashore. These people would go or hunting trips by qalaq; the oalaq was the only thpe of boat they knew. They din even imagi le that there could be anything different.

One morning, a man went out of his tent and saw something at the waterfront.It was a massive structure with many winglike forms that waved in the wind. Unbeknownst to the people, the thing had made its way into the bay. The huge looming sails were frightening and as the man did not have any way of knowing what it could be, he became afraid of it.

This group of Inuit had a shaman. They summoned him quickly and helped him don his ceremonial fringe belt. Then they performed a ritual to try and gain an understanding of what was happening to them. The shaman said 'These beings are not to be feared. They are people too, Just like us. They have bodies like us and they move about like us. The difference is only in the language that they speak. They are not threatening.'

The shaman's insight did not seem to calm the people. He went on to explain that the stranger's purpose In coming was to find out more about the Inuit. When a crew member wr'ed about on the ship's deck, the people were absolutely terrified.Then a crew member who was out on deck fixing the sails lowered a dory down the ship's side. When the Inuit realized that the strangers were actually coming to shore, they all fled inland. The shaman was unable to convince the people that they had no reason to flee. As he was soon the only one left behind at camp, he went to join the others. The Inuit group slept overnight up there on the bare tundra.

The next day it became evident that the big ship had left, zo the group proceeded back to the shore and to their tents. Oh myll Their belongings)Their finely crafted tools, all their predous implements, had been taken away and replaced with unfamiliar items. There was some strange, unappetizing food, and who knows what else. They had no idea what these things were or how they could be used.

The people tett incredibly sow/ that they had lost their possessions. They didn't know that the exchange Items were, in fact, useful objects. Oh, how they regretted that the strange big ship now had all of their belongings; their snowknives, knives, bows and arrows, and other tools. They had lost all of their hunting weapons to the big ship and felt deeply grieved.

The epigraph of Peter Pitseolak's People From Our Side reads:'I am telling the true things I know.I am not adding anything and I am not holding anything back.' We must give careful thought to what we are doing before we allow editors of Inuit literature to add things or to hold things back; for it is not always easy to identify what is of value in another culture.

University of Western Ontario

34 Works Cited

Ayaruaq, John. Jean Ayaruaq's Autoblograph1. rr.s. Inuktitut magazine Wes, D.f.A.N.D.Ottawa.

. The Story of John Ayaruaq.'North 16.2 (1969):1-5.

Akulak.Father I Ask of Thee ts.Inuktitut magazine files, D.I.A.N.D.Ottawa.

. I Ask of Thee.'Inuktitut. Winter 1972:19.

Breummer, Fred. Rev. of Harpoon of the Hunter, by Masicoosie.Canadian Geographical Jo' 83 (1971); iv-v.

Cleaver, Elizabeth. The Enchanted Caribou. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1985.

Houston, James. 111cta'Liktak: An Eskimo Legend. New York:Harcourt, 1965.

Kubluitok, Tautungie.'The Big Ship.' Transcribed and translated from Inukitut by Janet McGrath Li, edited by Robin McGrath, May 1987.

Lowenstein, Tom, ed.Eskimo Poems From Canada and Greenland: From Material Originally Collected by Koud Rasmussen. London: Anchor, 1973.

Markoosie. Harpoon of the Hunter. Montreal: McGilfOueens UP, 1970.

. Harpoon of the Hunter ts.Inuktitut magazine files, D.I.A.N.D.Ottawa.

. Wings of Mercy.1972.Montreal:Kativik School Board, 1984.

. Wings of Mercy ts. Inuktitut magazine files, D.I.A.N.D.Ottawa.

McGrath, Robin. 'Monster Figures and Unhappy Endings in Inuit Literature.°Canadian Journal of Native Education. 31.1 (1987): In publication.

Metayer, Maurice, ed.L_Nuligak. Toronto:Peter Martin, 1972.

Nanortak, Agnes. More Tales From the Igloo.Edmonton:Hurtig, 1985.

. More Tales From the Igloo ts.HurtIg files, Edmonton.

Pitseolak, Peter.People From Our Slie: A Life Story With Photographs by Peter Pitseolak and Oral Biography by Dorothy Eber. Edmonton:Hurtlg, 1975.

Schwarz, Herbert T.Elik and Other Stories of the MacKenzie (sic) Eskimos. Toronto/Montreal: McLellend and Stewart, 1970.

Stott, Jon C. 'An Interview With John (sic] Houston.' Canadian Children's Literature 20 (4980):2-16.

Swinton, Nelda. The Inuit Sea Goddess. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Ms, 1980.

Whitaker, Muriel A.'Canadian Indian and Eskimo Legends as Children's Literature.'Children's Books In Translation: The &nation and the ProLlems. ed. Gote Klingberg, Mary Orvig and Stuart Amor. Stockholm: Almqvist and YV1shell, 1977. 159-167.

35 Cross-Culturalism and Inter-Generational Communication in Children's Literature by Peter Hunt

This conference"Cross-Culturalisre In Children's literature"!3 basedon an act of faith.

I do not mean that "Cross-Culturalism* does not exist,or has no place in *Children's Literature: quite the contrary."Children's Literature is always concerned with forming attitudes, providing views of the world andbases for allusion, simply because its audience is developingand regardisss of didactic intent.Nor do I mean that 'Literature' should not have a place in the interaction of cultures; any text must necessarily embodyconscious and unconscious features of its own culture, and therefore confirmor challenge the reader.

Rather, the act of faith is in the process of readingin the capacity of text to transmita message nct just to one reader, but the same message to many readerswhole cultures to whole cultures.

All practitioners of books and literature know that plurality is basic to reading;we cannot prescribe what meaning will be generated by any text for any person in any given circumstance. Theories of receptionand response vary between Derrida's view of "the impossibility of determining the text's true meaning" (Has 108) to Holland's ideas on replicating the self. Common sense tends towards Fish's theory that there isa commonality of meaning determined by the "reading community," from which there are less significant personal deviations.Thus are we able to (brcadly) understand each other, and see much the same thing In a given text. The "reading community" is "a social construct whose operations are delimited by the systems of intelligibilitythat inform it" (Fish 335).

In other words, the meanings that are received from a text are controlledas much by the culture of the reader as the culture of the writer, and so when we speak of cross-cultural transmissionwe can in reality only speak of the appearance of transmission.

This may be obvious, but it is particularly apposite to children's literature, because, inmy view, the most important and difficult form of cross-cultural transmissionandone which underlies all others Is that between adult culture and child culture.

Intergenerational communication has provided a rich vein for sociolinguists, who have foundimportant differences in expectation, meaning, and language patterns betweenyoung and old (Coup land).Childhood, as I have suggested elsewhere (Hunt 1985), is very different from adulthood; not only does it involve rapiddevelopment (and shifts of perspective), but different perceptions and thought processes.It can be seen as a sub-culture or an anti- culture, which is subversive and partakes of oralbased thought rather than text-based thought (Ong).Children have their own culture, which may well be tnl4 cross-cultural:it is prior to all adult-perceived cultural differences.

It could, of course, be argued that I am simply talking about sub-cultures which will be specificto any given culture. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines "culture asa "particular form, stage, or type of intellectual development or civilization," and I would suggest that the adult/childgap is as wide, and perhaps even more fundamental than the black/white, male/female, US/Canadian, American/European divides.

My argument is that if we are really going to communicate between cultures,we must first recognize the difficulties inherent in the adult-writer/child-reader cultural relationship.It is not sufficient to provideartifacts from contrasting cultures, or to write about other ways of life in simple terms.(One has only to think of the difficulty that most adults have in sustaining interest in, say, eighteenth century children's bookswhich represent a cultural gap not just in their content, '-ut in theirmode of transmission.)Nor should we assume that because we can elicit "correct' responses from a child-reader, that reader has absorbed the cultural message we wished to transmit.

I would like to examine very briefly some of the adult/child cultural c,fferences, and I wouldlike to treat them optimisticallyas challenges to our literary and critical thinking, and, perhaps,as sources of Insight into cross-

37 cultural transmission in general. My categories are arbitrary and incomplete, largely because any individual standpoint will,I am sure, provide many other possibilities, but they represent problems which we commonly ignore or avoid.

Problems of Perception

Childhood can be defined as a characteristic way of thinking. As W. H. Auden said of the Alice books, we must ask: "What insight do they provide as to how the world appears to a child ?; and, second, ti what extent is the world really like that?"(Philips 37). Ong's work suggests that oral cultures "sort' the world differently from written cultures, and that their story shapes are different. The work of Applebee and Crago suggests a mental sequencing and perception in the developing child which is strikingly similar to that of the "unsophisticated' proto- novel such as Defoe's Moll Flanders.(It is interesting, then, that novels for children tend to be diluted versions of the sophisticated adult novel, and may thus be quite inappropriate to the child mind.)

The most violent clash between child and adult cultures may thus be at the point of meeting the book, as the embodiment of the written (adult) culture.All at once we are imposing upon (or teaching) a "story-shaped world," in which end is an inevitable function of beginning, and vice versa, and children have to team text-codes which are invisible to the skilled reader. Leaning to cope with these text-based codes, and to integrate them into the child's culture is not the same as acquiring literacy.It represents a shift in mode of thought.

People with small children, like myself, are constantly coming uponor stumbling oversuch conflicts of perception.Recently, I was reading Shirley Hughes's Up and Up, a wordless picture book with a close-sequenced cartoon -like set of illustrations with my 2=1 year-old daughter.In the storyor at least, the story as I had interpreted it in our previous thirty or so readings, a little girl tries to fly, using paper wings, and then balloons. The sequence with the balloons shows (1) little girl on the ground,(2) little girl rising off the ground, lifted by balloon, and (3) the balloons bursting on an overhanging branch. On the 31st reading, my daughter pointed to the balloons in (2), and said "Those balloons have not popped." The implications of such a statement should make the adult reader pause. Does my daughter see each picture as a separate event? And does that mean that she thinks that the book is a compendium of single events in the lives of 123 different little girls?

As a literary critic, I am prepared to accept that what I have just described is a ccmmonplace to teachers of reading, or developmental psychologists.But, if that is so, why do I never find any references to such problems in the elegant descriptions and reviews of picture books which I road each week? And, more puzzling, what does my daughter think of me as a reader? Has she merely been patronizing my curious reading habits? We cannot assume that we share the same inner perception merely because it displays the same external response

These problems of perception are closely linked to two other areas:

Problems of Allusion, and Problems of Control

It is commonly said that what is lost in translation is not merely tonal; it is the whole cultural substructure which gives meaning to the original text. To read, for example, Arthur Ransome's exemplary collections of Russian folk tales, is to be made aware of a mode of perception which is very different from say, the Grimms' tales.But whether we have approached any understanding of Russian culture, is more questionable. We may know differences intellectually, but, even if we feel them through the power of story, there is no way of telling whether we are feeling the culture, or the conflict or contrast with our own culture. Now that, as stated, may seem unanswerable, and therefore not worth saying, but it makes the point that we consistently underestimate the importance of our cultural heritage in providing cues as to what to feel, as well as how to understand.

Nor is this simply a question of acquired knrAdge of cultural facts.In the case of the child reader, there are intertextual allusions which control the transmission of meaning.Let me take a totally random example. The first book on the shelf in front of me as I write is Philippa Pearce's much acclaimed Tom's Midnight Garden, and the first sentence of that book Is:

4.. ,P.,,

38 If, standing alone on the back doorstep, Tom allowed himself to weep tears, theywere tears of anger.

How do we understand this sentence?It is quite a complex sentence, and thus it implies a reader with quite advanced skills.In terms of reference to the extemal, 'real" world, we also need to know whata 'back doorstep' is-not necessarily an obvious concept, evr.9 for those of the same local cultureas the author; we need to understand the concept of anger and tears.Now, that is not too difficult.No,, perhaps, is the text-code which we must grasp which says that more will be explained about 'Tom,' that he is a central character in whomwe should take more interest, and that this location will be filled out.But do we also see the allusion inherent in the selection of the word 'weep"-as opposed, say, to 'cry' (perhaps a more usual selection for collocation withchildren). The word weep-it seems to me, as a fairly widely read adult-carries a slightly nineteenth centuryor Victorian air; the redundancy of 'weep tears' (what else?) signals the faintly ethereal tow which pervades the whole book;indeed, the whole sentence structure Is one which calls up echoes of other 'nooks and the atmospheresthey contain. In short, we underestimate the degree to which textual allusions cater- and intra- and extra-)convey the "meanings" we take for granted.

The problem of control, that is, the degree to which the oral narrator is initiated in the writtentext by authorial tone, is a complex one.Narratorial absence or presence, directness or indirectness of presentation, showing or telling, are all elements which modify and influence the way in whichany reader feels about a text (Chatman, Hunt 1984). Rose has, perhaps notoriously, seen the text-child relationshipas a power struggle, but there is no doubt that the move from oral to written also throws up practical problems.

Problems of Content

Cultures can be defined by what they find important, by their attitudes to things-and indeed, linguistically, what words they have for concepts and distinctions.Child culture and adult culture can also be defined in this way. The naming of something which is significant in one culture may haveno meaning in another culture.I am told, for example, that the concept of 'weather" has little meaning in some parts of Canada, whereas the rather bolder concept of 'climate' has little meaning in England. Whether you react to the word 'snow" with excitement,or indifference, or fear, depends on where you five-your whole cultural training and expectation.If we acknowledge this in general cultural terms, we might have less fear about introducing concepts suchas sex or death into children's books.In the child culture (as far as one can generalize) the interest insex might be much the same as the interest in monsters or puddles in the road:interesting-and perhaps rather fun as a weapon in the counter-culture war. Similarly with violence.It is only in the adult-culture that there is a prurience about violence; in the child-culture it is exploratory and pragmatic. And the taboo of death, which adults bring with so much trepidation into the child's world must, I think, be perceived very differently by the child. Whether the child's reaction is basedon ignorance, or on a Zen-Romantic closeness to the elementals of birth and death, or on an underdeveloped ego, which has lessto lose-the result is the same: the child Is different.

When we talk about cross - cultural communication, then, we must beware. Dowe slice the cake of world cultures vertically, as It were, into separate cultural chunks (which containmen, women, and children), or do we slice It horizontally, into layers (where ail men are different from all women and all children different from all adults)?Or some combination? As you will see, all the examples of adult vs. child cultures I have given are considerably complicated if we step outside our own 'vertical" cultures to places where, for example, thereare no doorsteps, or where there is no childhood.It is a difficult problem, and it is one we should face before we talk glibly about the ways in which cultures communicate.It should be clear that superficial knowledge of other peoples' cultures will often do no more than to reinforce prejudices or stereotypes.If this is true of visible cultural differences, how much more Is it so of the invisible differences, such as that between adult and child.True understanding of cross- culturalism, then, really does begin at home.

University of Wales, Cardiff, U.K.

39 Works Cited

Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse.Ithaca:Correll UP, 1978.

Coupiand, N. C. and J.Research project on Intergeneration Communication, University of Wales, Cardiff, UK.

Fish, Stanley,Is There A Text in This Class? Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980.

Hall, Robert A.'Deconstructing Derrida on Language in Tm Linguistics generala, Pisa:Pacini, 1985.107-116.

Hughes, Shirley. Up and Up. London: Bodley Head, 1979.

Hunt, Pee:.'N:rrath.n. Tic ary and Chiltircen iltarnture"Child:an': Literature Asscciztion Quarterly 9.1(19'3g:191 4.

'Necessary Misreadings:Directions in Narrative Theory for Children's Literature.'Studies in the Literary Imagination, 18.2(Fall 1985): 107-121.

Ong, Waiter.Orality and Literacy.London: Methuen, 1982.

Pearce, A. Philippa. Tom's Midnight Garden. London: Oxford UP, 1985. Catechisms: Whatsoever a Christian Child Ought to Know by Patricia Demers

Proscriptive lists and codes have fatten upon hard times. The parroting of "precept upon precept' (Isaiah 28.10) has become as quaint as a strict adherence to Leviticus's innumerable "commandments' (27.3x). The most Wass' type of catechesis and the one cited in the New Testament (Luke 1.4; Acts 18.25, 21.21; Romans 2.18; Galatians 6.6) is religious. And it is in the field of religious instruction in particular, so the charge is levelled, that the reductive and deadly aspects of mere memorization are most damaging. Graham Greene has described the catechism's catalogue of "preposterous' questions and answers as "smug and explanatory: mystery like a butterfly killed by cyanide, stiffened and laid out with pins and paper-strips" ("A Visit to Morin' 71).In his play The Living Room Greene emphasizes Father Brown's inability to help a girl in the throes of an affair with a married man by having the priest admit that his "tongue is heavy with the Penny Catechism' (58).Yet my own to reading, and often discovering, catechisms leads me to look upon them as more than dusty relics or imprisoning codification. At times they resemble the declension and conjugation paradigms that all of us have probably struggled with in second-language classes:a necessary grid by which to translate and interpret.For a conference on the theme of cr,ss-culturalism they represent the ways in wl 'ch the practices of the early church were transposed and adapted; they also reflect some of the possible variations on the founding moral tenets of children's literature.

Catechetical instruction. in the printed English tradition at least, was aimed at children who were never too young to team -or, to sin.Unlike the lengthy baptismal preparation of adults in the catcchumenate of the first six centuries, catechesis in the Renaissance and later was a duty shared by parents and pastors.In A Shorte and fruitefull treatise of the profile and necessitie of Catechizing (1580) Robert Cawdray proved his thesis not only by citing the Book of Commor Prayer and the curate's duties to Instruct and examine" but also by quoting frc. the promulgation of the Queen's high commissioners issued at Lambeth, May 15, 1576, to the effectthat al fathers and mothers, maisters and dames, shall sende their children and servants to the Churche every Sunday and holyday, with their Catechismes to bee instructed in the same.' Thomas Whites A Manual for Parents (1660) advised the gifts of the Bible and Catechism as 'fittest to bee given' ('Epistle Dedicatory'), advice still endorsed a century' later by the preacher-engraver George Burder, whose Early Piety (1777) held the 'entertaining history of Master Billy and Miss Betsey Goodchild" whom the schoolmistress Mrs. Lovegood rewards because of their diligence In learning their catechism" (12).Predict-bly supporting the validity of an unordained ministry, Bunyan underscores the need for parents to catechize their children through various exhortations.His A Familiar Catechism; or. Instruction for the Ignorant (1675) devotes a chapter to the discussionof seeking salvation young,' in which the answerer cites Biblical texts both to insist that God does indeed 'punish little chlidren for sin against him" and to clarify the grim option:"Either go on in your sins; or 'remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come.' Eccles. xii.1' (16).Positive and negative examples of parental guidance abound in his work; one of the most poignant scenes in The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680) is the deathbed catechizing of her children by the virtuous wife of Mr. Badman-whose continuous villainy contrasts with her piety and duty.Although the abundance of Greek and Latin terms bandied about by the unknown author of The Father's Spectacles to Behold his Children and the Child's ... to Kneel Before his Parents (1695) suggests an audience very different from Bunyan's, their directives are remarkably alike:"1st, To educate them in good discipline, as the word paideia signifieth. 2dly. To instruct them in divine knowledge' (3).

Catechizing that was closely linked to discipline and obedience understandably became the central element in the curriculum of eighteenth-century Charity Schools established for the education of workhouse children. One of the schools' earliest and most articulate supporters, James Talbott, buttressed his claims about religion as the most proper Means' of knowing ' what is of the greatest Importance to our Happiness in this and the next World' with a particular adaptation of Locke's Tabula rasa; as Talbott argues about "the Business of Instruction" in The Christian School-Master (1707),

...it ring considered that the Minds of Children, like blank Paper, or smooth Wax, are equally cal ,f any Impression: The Use and Exercise of our Understanding advances by slower Degrees than that of our Limbs, and requires more Assistance from without, to guide and direct it. (17)

41 The school master's paramount duty isto imprint in the Minds and Memory of the children committed to his Instruction, the fundamental Doctrines and Duties of our holy Religion, as they are laid down in the excellent Catechism of our Church; a short but plain Summary of whatsoever a Christian ought to know and believe for his Soul's health."Talbott's endorsement of memorization as a good and 'natural" (93) consequence of repetition parallels his view of childhood as a time of "Submission and Obedience,.. . a State of Subjection to the will of those that are more capable to govern" (40-41).

Throughout its history, in the catechumenate and later in the Tridentine period, the art of catechizing has been intricately connected both to a respect for discipline and tradition and to a knowledge of the Creed and Scriptures.In the early church the presentation of the Creedthe text itseltto the Competentes (or elect', or illuminandi, graduates of the catechumenate who were approaching Baptism at Easter, was a cause for rejoicing and for profound contemplation of the mysteries involved. Speaking to 'recent converts,' St. Augustine fashioned the topic of The Presentation of the Creed around a delicate yet precise simile:

We call it Creed or symbolum, transfening the term by a kind of simile, because merchants draw up for themselves a symbolum by which their alliance is held bound as by a pact of fidelity.Your union, moreover, is a spiritual fellowship, so that you are like traders seeking a valuable pearl, that is, the charity which will be poured forth in your hearts by the Holy Spirit who will be given to you. One makes progress toward this charity by faith in what is contained in the Creed. (Sermon 212, 117)

Augustine was talking to adults and, in fact, like Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus before him, he, too, was baptized as an adult.But by no means was the moral education of the young overlooked; if it is not the largest subject in patriot= it is probab& because it was such a natural, taken-for-granted occurrence. One stirring defense, appropriate to cite because of the paraiiels between its jewel images and Augustine's, is John Chrysostom's Address on Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children (c. 388).Likening the child's soul to 'a city but lately founded and built" Chrysostom traces the developn:nt until the child eventually becomes a parent and begins to catechize his own children, thus contributing to "a golden cord".Later treatises in English are not as metaphoric, yet their emphases on the importance of the Creed and instruction are similar. The eighth of the Thirty- Nine Articles of the Church of England upholds the Nicene, Athanasian and Apostles' Creeds as "thoroughly to be received and believed" (Bicknell 147).Robert Abbott introduces his A Mother's Catechism for Her Children (1646) by distinguising it from a sermon:

...whereas preaching is a speaking unto men to instruction, edification, and comfort, catechising is a speaking to men for instruction mainly: preaching is a dilating of one member of religion into a body; catechising is the contracting of a whole into a sum: preaching is for all sorts; catechising for the yong and ignorant.

This "knowledge of the grounds of religion' encourages the leamer to 'mak:, an Hedge of Divinity to enclose all... readings, and hearings from the world, within their proper bounds, for the seffing of.. . judgments, and raising up

... affections insuperaLly."

The way to Ensure the success of this protective contracting to tailor the material to the capacities and awareness of the world of the child, one of the salient features insisted on by all catechetica! theorists. Thomas Becon's A New Catechism, Set Forth Dialogue-Wise in Familiar Talk Between the Father and the Son, which was written during the reign of Edward VI, begins its lengthy discussions of repentance, faith, law, prayer, the sacraments and the offices of all degrees with the father's promise to his six-year-old-son that the talk will be not of things which far exceed both thy age and capacity, but of such matters as be meet for children to know" (8). The title and contents of John Paget's A rimer of Christian Religion, Or a forme of catechising, drawne from the beholding Gods works in the creation of the world (1601) make clear his empirical, inductive bases; gathering lessons from every imaginable source under the sun, Paget always grounds his exercises in the familiar and the recognizable:

42

.110=116 As in a home-booke, which little children carne, there bee letters in a paper within which appeare through the same: so under the blew Saphir of the firmament there is spread a sheete of royal! paper written all over with the wisdome of God. (31)

The kind of instruction John Bunyan formulates in A Book for Boys and Girls (1686) is deliberately drawn from domestic events and objects, thus complying with his pledge that "by their Play-things, I would them entice" (A2). One of the lengthiest of these Country Rhimes (Bunyan's subtitle) is the dialogue of the Spider and Sinner, in which the insect catechizes the backslider, who penitently admits "They learn may, that to Spidersgo to School." Methodology has to be adaptable. Isaac Watts is shrewd enough to realize that the much-maligned setresponse could be abbreviated and that the "Scripture proofs" themselves could be omitted with, however, a clear pedagogic aim in view: as a very delightful way of leading them to a more complete acquaintance with the holy scriptures" (vii),

The three catechisms I have chosen to discuss in some detail, from the sixteenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centures, show some of the diverse ways in which the foregoing common principles were adapted. Laurence Vaux's A Catechism or Christian Doctrine, Necessary for Children and Ignorant People (15, .) is the first English adaptation of the continental Tndentine manuals, especially those of Peter Canisius.Dorothy Kilner's The First Principles of Religion, and the Existence of a Deity, explained in a series of dialogues adapted to the capacity of the infant mind (c. 1787) is a most lively and challenging exchange in which the child is nothing like a submissive yes-sayer.Albert Lacombe's Catholic Ladder or Pictorial Catechism (1872), designed for work in the mission field, narrates all of Christian history through symbolic pictures.

Circulated in the Eli7abethan Penal Days, Vaux's Catechism was one of the first English compilations of the catechetical tradition dating back to Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose and Augustine; and yet, despite its indebtedness to many sources and admitted borrowing from the work of the German Jesuit Canisius, the distinctive voice of the Recusant teacher and priest is hard throughout. Much of my own interest in this neglected catechism grew from the amazing contrast between its neasured equanimity of tone and the upheavals and pain of Vaux's life.Warden of the Collegiate Church of Manchester at the time of the passage of the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, in 1559 Vaux fled first to Ireland and then to the Recusant community at Louvain to avoid interrogation by Royal Commissioners. He was a teacher of the children to lay exiles when his Catechism was first published in Louvain. As part of the large scale missionary expedition of 1580 to England, Vaux was captured at Rochester, imprisoned at Westminster, and, after 1584, M the Clink, in SouthWark, where he died the next year"a prisoner, but well content with (his] states (Law lxv).

As impressive as the optimistic cheer of this inmate is the total absence of polemical statement in his Catechism. He candidly admits that a decree of the Seventh Lateran Council, charging schoolmasters "upon Sondays and holy days to instruct and teach their Schollers Christian Doctrine," caused him to feel "a great negligence in my selfe, that I had not done my duetie htrtofore in bringing up my schollers." Vaux writes with such evident concern for the children's understanding and well being that he embodies all the features Augustine identified as characteristic of the ideal catechist:

Flwe must drive out by gentle encouragement his excessive timidity, which hinders him from expressing his opinion. We must temper his shyness by introducing the idea of brotherly fellowship. We must by questioning find out whether he understands(The First Catechetical Instruction, 43)

His patient and thorough explication of the articles of the Creed, each :supported with marginal Biblical citations, shows him closely attuned to the Augustinian advice of attempting "b1 dwelling somewhat upon them to untie,so to speak, and spread them out to view, and offer them to the minds of our hearers to examine and admire" (Chapter 3). While it is true that Vaux often presents a competent English translation of Canisius's Latin,as, for example, in his definitions of Faith and a Sacrament, he also departs significantly from his Jesuit "source,"as these contrasted pairs demontrate:

43 What Is the Church? What is the Church? It Is the congregation of The church is a visible all suche as are pro- company of people, first fessours of Christ his gathered together of Christ fayth and doctrine, whiche and his disciples, continued is guyded under one, who unto this day in a per- next unto Christ is heere in petual! succession, in one earth their chiefest Apostolicke faith, living head and pastour. under Christ the head, and in earth, under his Vicar, Pastour, and chiefe Bishop.

What is Charitic? How must we honour nod by It Is a vertue geven us charity? from God, whereby we love We must love God with all our God for his owne sake, and hartes so finely, that our neighbour for God's neither for feare nor sake. flattery. prosperity, nor (Canisius, A Catechisme adversity, wee be carried for Catholiques) away from God. And that the love of no creature remaine in our harts, but for God & Godlynes. With al our souls wee must love god so faithfully, that wee hadde rather our soules should be severed from our bodie then from God. This love maketh all things light and easie:This love causeth the glorious martirs to suffer al kind of torments, both paciently and gladly for the fervent love of God. This ardent love unto God caused the blessed fathers in wildemesse to take greate paines & penance upon them in fasting and praying, weeping and mouming: For their meate and drinke they used dry bread & cold water, hearbes, roues, and barkes of trees: for their cloathing haire and sack-cloth, the cold earth for a bed: a hard stone for a pillowe: and were ready to suffer any crueil death for Christes sake: their harts were so kindled with a burning charity towardes God. (11, 35-36)

The differences are more than sylistic.Vaux's emphases on the line of apostolic succession and the virtue that willingly endures mortification and torment are tailored to fitan historical situation where both suppositions are being tested.From one perspective A Catechism or Christian Doctrine seems to be standard fare, inasmuch as it contains an exposition of the articles of faith, sacraments, commandments and precepts of the Church, uses the question and answer formatwith the responses holding the informationand maintains an authoritarkIn formality.yet, considered alongside later forms of catechis n, Vaux's work remains unique and simple:without the woodcut illustrations (fiqurata d'imaqini) of Cardinal Bel larmine's Dottrina Cristiana Breve (1597), without the clipped, epigrammatic style of Henry Tuberville's DowmCatechism (1649), withut the sectarian harangue of Thomas Lye's anti-Papist A Plain and Familiar Method of Instructing the Younger Sort (1662), and without the compactness of Richard Challoner's Abridgement of Christian Doctrine (1772).In its sheer expansiveness, with answers suited for declamation rather than memorization, Vaux's catechism stands alone and apart.

The gap separating the colloquial exchanges between Maria and her Mamma, in Dorothy Kilner's First Principles, from the formal discourse of master and student in Vaux's Catechism might suggest a vastly different understanding of catechesis. Although the chatterbox Maria sounds willful and almost rude by contrast to her docile, Renaissance counterpart, they are linked by a common adult desire to impart the fundamental elements of

[ 3 44 religion and belief In an unequivocal yet loving way.Maria's curiosity about basic concepts, such as the origins of people and objects, and the nature of Godhead, prayer and the Bible, sparks all of the dialogues and also accounts for the distinctive emphases of a religious primer organized around this premise: Nobody can think a child of three or seven years old should be argued with as a grown person. Long discourses, and philosophical reasonings, at best amaze and confound, but do not instruct children.

As an instructress Mamma is certainly not a know -it -all, and often she is flummoxed by her child's queries, which have the effect of backing her into a corner.

Maria. Who made the Bible? Mamma.It has been made a vast number of years. Nlada. But who ,luck 1\? Mamma. Some very good men wrote it, that every body might know how to be good, and do what God pleased. Maria. But how did those men know what God would please? Mamma. Because God directed and taught them what to write, and therefore they were sure it was what God pleased. Maria. How did God direct and teach them? Mamma.I don't know. Maria. Why don't you know? Mamma. Because I do not. There are a great many things about God, I cannot expiain. Maria.I thought you knew every thing, Mamma. Mamma. Then, my dear, you was very much mistaken, for there is a great number of things I know nothing of, nor cannot understand.(24)

Maria is a single-minded questioner, determined to extract a response that suits her; for instance, she demands a prompt and tidy answer about "where God is": Maria. Why can't you tell me now?I want to hear now, and I want to know where God is, that I may see God. (12)

The child's frustration, in trying to attach a gender to God, is not dispelled by her mother's saccharine refusal to compare or speculate:

Maria.If God is not man, is God a woman? or what is God? Mamma.I never saw God: but I know that God is neither a man or a woman, or like anything in the world.But I know that Cod is very kind and good, and loves all good people. (14)

The candour and resilience of Mariain many ways a forerunner of Edgeworth's Rosamondmake her an endearingly real child, who admits being distracted in church ("always thinking about something else, and looking about") and wanting to say long prayers with a very pragmatic aim ("to ask God to give me things, and to make God love me"). Maria is proud of her acts of charity, but is appalled by the "naughtiness" of poor boys, until her mother explains that their "fathers and mothers are out all day working very hard, to get a little money to buy them some victuals, and have no time to teach them" (43).With her believable middle-class lapses and prejudices Maria is still a more enjoyable character than insipid paragons like Mrs. Sherwood's Mary, who, in Stories Explanatory of the Church Catechism (1817), enters mechanically and cravenly into one conversation after anoth at. with her godmother; Kilner's headstrong Maria is definitely the initiator and animator of discussion.

Lacombe's Tableau-Catechisme might seem at first glance very far removed from the texts of Vaux and Kilner.Yet this pictorial charting of salvationstory was conceived with the same earnest pedagogy that brought the earlier catechism and dialogue into being.After eight years of careful preparation, and no doubt innumerable experiments, the Oblate missionary allowed his Catholic Ladder to be printed, announcing in the subtitle that it had already been "used with success for the speedy ano instruction of Indiana, children and uneducated people." In his Memoirs Lacombe clarified that the catechism had emerged from his work among the Cree and Blackfeet and 49

45 his attempts to enliven explanations with symbols drawn in the sand or sketched with charcoal on buffalo hide; the lithographed chart was a considerable improvement:

At St. Albert ... I made with ink and paper a longer history with these pictures.It started at the Creation, and went down through Bible history to the coming of Christ, then through the history of the Church and All Life on our pilgrimage to Heaven.(Hanley 86)

His endorsement of the power of the picture is as conscientious as Cardinal Bellarmine's, and also reverses the long-standing opinion, among Jesuit missionaries, that pictures were not an appropriate mode to begin to instruct an unbeliever. The first Jesuit Superior in Canada, Father Paul Lejeune, had decidedas early as 1637to switch from pictures, or "change (his] battery," in attempting to explain the major episodes of the Bible to Makheabichtichiou, an Indian living near Quebec.(Thwaites X1, 157).Over two centuries later, Father Francis Blanchet, Vicar General in the lands west of the Rockies, re-instated the picture or representation as a powerful teaching device in his Saha le Stick; meaning "the stick from heaven" in Chinook jargon, it helped the catechist to tell the whoJudaeo-Christian story with a single visual aid.Lacombe's Ladder was a development and refinement of Blanchet's Saha le Stick, for the Oblate's easily portable chart was not only more detailed but more consciously dualistic as well.

The enlargedposter-size versions (68 x 104 cm.) of Lacombe's Tableau-Catechisme that have survived generations of use in Oblate-run residential schools for Indian and Metis children are a real curiosity to the modem viewer. The catechism is a vividly coloured outline of the "fundamental mystery" and "most important facts per centuries" designed in a way that recalls a giant game of snakes and ladders.But there is nothing frivolous about the sinuous paths of yellow and gray that frame the interior ladder-like measurement of black and red bars and circles, representing centuries and year? (or days), respectively. Whether the chat. was cut lengthwise and taped to produce one long story, or mounted as a broad poster with the Biblical and post-Biblical accounts side by side, three features remain outstanding:the pictorial narratives are dualistic, typological and interconnected. Echoing the oldest extant manual of explicit catechetical instruction, the anonymous Didache (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) of the second century, with its theme of the two ways, "One of Life and one of Death" (Schaff 162), Lacombe calls his two routes "vole du bien" and "voie du mal." The design and coloration of various different yet related events, such as the cloud encapsulation of the Sinai Covenant and the Crucifixion scene and the sacrificial altars separating Jamb and Isaac from the Worship of False Gods, indicate a typological frame of mind which has always been a fundamental ingredient of the catechetical enterprise, involving, in the words of Cyril of Jerusalem, turning "from the old to the new, from the figure to the reality."(Lecture xix, 144) That there are well-traveled paths connecting the Way of Good and the Way of Evil, along with hovering depictions of virtues and vices and appropriate angelic or demonic guides, shows that despite all the schematizing of this symbolic joumey, the crucial and dynamic element of the individual will is never overlooked.

These three multiform examples have, I hope, proven something about the resourcefulness and adaptability of this literary form.Conflated by Vaux, domesticated by Kilner, and simplified by Lacombe, the catechism is a reflection of the state of children's literature in periods of development, establishment and dissemination. And yet the story is neither as tidy nor as predictable as such Baconian triads might implyVaux's catechism is an underground work, challenging the politically sanctioned belief of the day; Kilner's dia4ue recognizes the impertinence and wilfulness of children in a way that would have incensed a critical doyenne like Mrs. Trimmer; and while versified, musical and variously nostalgic catechisms appeared in Victorian England, Lacombe dared to retum bluntly and, what Is most amazing, non-verbally to basic catechetical principles.

University of Alberta

Works Cited

Abbot, Robert.Milk for Babes. or A Mother's Catechism for her Children.London:Printed by John Legatt for Philemon Stephens, 1646.

Augustine, Saint. The First Catechetical Instruction Me Catechizandis Rudibusi, trans. Rev. J. P. Christopher. Westminster, Maryland: The Newman bookshop, 1946.

46 50 Sermons on the Liturgical Seasons, trans. Sr. M. S. Muldowney. New York:Fathers of the Church, Inc., 195g.

Becon, Thomas. The Catechism of Thomas Becon, ed. J. Ayre.Cambridge:At the University Press, 1844.

Bicknell, E. J. A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Laurch of England.London: Longmans, 1958.

Bunyan, John. A Book for Boys and Girls: or. Country Rhimes for Children.With a Preface by Barry Adams. New York:Garland Publishing, Inc., 1978.

. A Familiar Catechism; or, Instruction for the Ignorant, ed. J. N. Brown.Philadelphia:American Baptist Publication Society, 1853.

Burder, George.Early Piety; or Memoirs of Children Eminently Serious.London: Sold by H. trapp, 1777.

Canisius, Peter.Certayne necessarie Principles of Religion, which may be entitled, A Catechisme conteyninq all the partes of the Christian and Catholique Fayth, 1578.9.English Recusant Literature 1558-1640, ed. C. M. Rovers. Volume 2.Menston: The Scolar Press, 1969.

Cawdray, Robert. A Shorte and fruitefull Treatise of the rrofite and necessitie of catechizing:that is, of instructing the youth, and ignorant persons in the principle; and grounds of Christian religion.London:Printed by Thomas Dawford, 1580.

The Father's Spectacles to Behold his children and the Child's ... to Kneel Before his Parents.London'Printed by John Astwood, 1695.

Greene, Graham. The Living Room. A Play in Two Acts.London: Heinemann, 1953.

"A Visit to Morin,' A Sense of Reality.London:Bodley Head, 1963.

Hanley, Philip M."Father Lacombe's Ladder,' Etudes Oblates, 32(1973), 85-96.

Kilner, DormilyThe First Principles of Religion, and the Existence of a Deity Explained in a series of dialogues adapted to the capacity of the infant mind.London:Printed by John Marshall, n.d.

Lacombe ATableau-Catechisme our ('Instruction Prom te et Facile des Sauva es dcs Enfants et des Personnes ne sachant pas lire.Montreal:Librarie Beauchemin Limitee, 1896.

Laistner, M L W Christianity and Pagan Culture in the Lat&r Roman E-npireToqether with an English Translation of John Chrysostom's Address on Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1951.

Law, Thomas Graves, ed. A Catechism or Christian Doctrine by Laurence Vaux.Manchester:Printed for the Chethan Society, 1885.

Paget JohnA Primer of Christian Religion, Or a forme of catechizing, drawne from the beholding of Gods works in the creation of the world.London:Printed for John Harison, 1601.

Schaff Philip, transThe Oldest Church Manual Called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles: The Didache and Kindred Documents in the Original.London: Henry Jerrard, 1885.

Talbott, James. The Christian School-Master.London:Printed for F. C. and J. Rivington, 1811.

47 Thwaltes, Reuben Gold, ed. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Cleveland: The Burrows Brothers, 1896- 1901.

Vaux, Laurence. ASatechism or Christian Doctrine, Necessary for Children and Ignorant People.S. Omers, anno 1620.

Ware, H. and P. Schaff, trans.S. Cyril of Jerusalem:Catechetical Lectures. Oxford: James Parker and Company, 1894.

Watts, Isaac. The Second Sett of Catechisms and Prayers. Twelfth Edition.London:Printed for J. Buck land and T Longman, 1768.

White, Thomas. A rvianuai for Parents. Wherein is set down very particuiar directions in reference to the baptising, correcting, instructing and chusinq a calling for their children.London:Printed for Joseph Cranford, 1660.

48 The Queer, the Strange, and the Curious in St. Nicholas: Cross-Cutturalism in the Nineteenth Century by Grata D. Little

R. Gordon Kelly's Mother Was a Lady has demonstrated the value of examining children's periodical literature of the late nineteenth century as a means of discovering the values promoted by society at that time.His focus is on aspects of our own culture and how they are advocated. He does not touch on cross - cultural themes. However, the highly acclaimed St. Nicholas has numerous articles which inform readers about the world at large, about people who are not like the typical upper middle class children who subscribed to the magazine.

I thought t woo::: ha 'brstamsting to Goo Pat how much a.ow...-ctturr.! ....-cnt=lt :hue wa: In St. '."licho:as and what kinds of attitudes toward other cultures were being disseminated to young people of the late nineteenth century. So I examined twelve of the first fifteen volumes of the magazine (14X, XI, and XV).For my investigation I considered an item to be cross- cultural if tt was set In another country, was translated from the folklore of another society, or explained the customs of another people.I included American Indians and American Blacks as representative of other cultures, but did not include Great Britain. Sometimes I was uncomfortable with the exct sion of Britain because the articles in question (such as The Lord Mayor of London's Show" or 'London Milkwormni were clearly explaining an aspect of British culture the author believed the American audience to be unfamiliar with. Nevertheless, for the sake of consistency I did not Include these as examples of cross-cultural content. As a result, my figures are probably conservative.I found myself making fairly arbitrary decisions in considering some of the fiction when some of the characters were blacks, Indians or natives of other lands.If one of the major characters represented another culture, I counted it as an example of cross-culturalism. For example, in "The Fairport Nine,' a serial about a ,;aseball team, one of the players is black and is an active protagonist throughout the story.If, however, the main characters were mainstream American or British, and their contact with the other culture vas incidental, then I did not include the story.Since several of the serials in St. Nicholas are peripatetic adventures, there were frequent instances where one or two chapters of a story concerned another culture, but that setting or theme was not typical of the entire story.I did not include them as cross - cultural txamples, so once again I think my counts are on the conservative side.

For the twelve volumes between 1873 and 1888 that I examined, the percentages ranged from 15% to 23%:

Volume I 19%

Volume II 17%

Volume III 21%

Volume IV 15%

Volume V 17%

Volume VI 18%

Volume VII 19%

Volume VIII 22%

Volume IX 15%

Volume XI 23%

Volume XV 17%

For such consistent pattern of Inclusion, we might suspect an editorial policy dictating a certain amount of cross cultural material.

49 Mary Mapes Dodge was editor of St. Nicholas from its beginning in 1873 until her death in 1905.It is widely agreed that hers was the guiding hand in forging the magazine's character. Her stated policies were as follows:

1. To give clean, genuine fun to children of all ages.

2. To give examples of the finest types of boyhood and girlhood.

3.To inspire them with a fine appreciation of pictoria..rt.

4. To cultivate the imagination in profitable directions.

5. To foster a love of country, home, nature, truth, beauty, sincerity.

6. To prepare boys and girls for life as it is.

7. To stimulate their ambitionsbut along normally progress ke lines.

8. To keep pace with a fast-moving world in all its activities.

9.To give reading matter which every parent may pass to his children unhesitatingly.

Although she does not directly state a policy related to cross- cultural content, at least two of her policies would contribute to the inclusion of cross-cultural material. The most obvious is number eight, keeping pace with the world, but number six, too, preparing for life as it is, contributes to St Nicholas' commitment to providing Information about other peoples and cultures.

The articles and stories I looked at cover a full range of the components which comprise culture, with special emphasis on those which have appeai to children.Typical articles about customs practiced in other lands include titles like these:"St. Nicholas Day in Germany," 'How I kept the Chinese New Year,' 'Curious Customs at Easter,' "Sow Oriental Sports I Saw,' Amusements for Arab Children,' and 'Games and Toys of Corean Children." The music, food and clothing of other cultures also receive attention."A Japanese Child-song' appears complete with sheet music. There are articles detailing the history and use of various musical instruments, such as "About Violins,' and explaining dances like "Some Malayan Dances.' 'Some Queer Dishes" outlines a selection of the more interesting and exotic food prepared throughout the world."African Fashions' also describes the clothing and hairstyles of the Nlam-Niam people of West Africa.Japanese dress is discussed in 'Blossom-Boy of Tokio' and in a pictorial study of "A Japanese. Military Noble in Court Dress."'Various Headdresses of the Present Day' depicts hats wom by women hi severe! ;-luropean countries.

Language received significant attention in St. Nicholas.In the early Issues passages in French and German were given for readers to translate. Those who sent their translations to th, editor were rewarded by seeing their names printed in a later issue. Samuel Chew (134) saw the practice as a 'doubtless unattractive feature' which was soon abandoned. However. tftspite fewer readers' sending In their translations, the passages continued to appear for several years. Even after full scale translations were no longer asked for, the editor was stiN promoting foreign language skills. Volume XV contained a series known as 'Pictures for Little Frecct. (or German) Readers,' which consisted of a half -page picture or cartoon with a French or German caption.In feature articles about children from other lands, linguistic information figured prominently.'Blossom-Boy of Tokio' listed Japanese greetings, simple phrases and vocabulary far several everyday items.Different ,laming systems were also presentedEgyptian and Aztec hlerogtyphs as well as Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese scripts. The legends and myths of other countries appeared either Individually as in 'Golden Hair: A Russian Folk Story,' or in series such as 'Italian Fairy Tales' and 'Stories from the Northern Myths.'

Religions other than Christianity and non - nuclear family structures receive very little attention. 'Mumbo Jumbo,' a treatment of African ritual is the exception. Most of the rites discussed even in that article are viewed as illogical superstition; however, the following proviso is included:

50 Of course, all savage and heathen people do strange things in connection with their religion and laws, yet however odd and ridiculous some of them may seem to us, the people themselves believe them right and proper because they are so taught by their priests and rulers.

As we can see, nineteenth century cross-culturalism is not free of bias, certainly not as it appears in St. Nicholas. There is very little recognition that non - Christian religions even exist.Jews and Mohammedans are mentioned, but little effort is made to explain their beliefs. There is also bias in favor of European cultures as well. Germany and France are the leading sources for the cross - cultural stories, articles, and pictures I examined. Northern cultures fare better than southern, particularly tropical ones. The Far East Is treated with care and respect. A reader is even taken to task for being critical of the Chinese in this editorial response:

The best thing that could happen to you would be just what you so dread,"to be taken to China." You might get used then to what you callthe dreadful slits of eyes that the Chinese have and those disgusting chopsticks.'... they [the Chinese] consider them much more suitable and convenient than any implements we use in eating. To their view, the use of chopsticks is an evidence of superior culture; and they ii sist that the use of such barbarous

instruments as knives and forks, and cutting or tearing the meat from the bones on the table, . are evidences of a lower order of civilization.

While St. Nicholas stories and articles show the virtues of European cultures and sympathetically explain the sometimes strange ways of the Japanese and Chinese. such tolerance is not extended equally to all cultures. American Indians, for example, are described in this way:

The Piute Indians are poor creatures. They hang around the Pacific Railroad stations and beg for money, or clothes, or anything, except soap, that they think they can get. They are ahvays dirty and have a sullen look. ... But these Indians may grow up to be respectable ... for ... there are Indians upon whom white missionaries have exerted such a good influence that they are industrious and thrifty....

In "An Indian Story' some children ask their grandfather who is in the right and he responds, 'Perhaps the English were sometimes unjust in other matters, but is it not better, after all, that a people like them should have the country who could grow to be a great nation, than a 9 Indians, who were only a little above the bears they killed and ate?"

St. Nicholas, however, had Indian readers and the negative attitude toward Indians relaxed in later issues as shown in stories about noble savages such as Louisa May Alcott's 'Onawandah," in which the Indian dies while saving the children of a white pastor who befriended him, These Indian readers wrote letters about themselves and their livesa story, 'Nedawr by one of them even appeared in the magazine. Dodge called readers' attention to the story, "not only because it is a sketch from real Indian life, written by an Indian, but because the writer, 'Bright Eyes' is a proof herself of the capacity of the Indian for education and the best enlightenment." A letter from Bright Eyes herself is included which ends this way:It would be so much better for my people if the white people had a more thorough knowledge of them, because we have felt deeply the results of their ignorance of us."

Like Indians, Arabs, Africans and aboriginals of the South Pacific don't fare well in the pages of St. Nicholas. Arabs "appear best at a distance; for soap Is not ... fashionable."Africans are characterized as 'richer In spare time than in anything else .... They're savages.'Australian bushmen are called 'black rascals" and "blundering savages."Color is definitely a major Issue, as this line from a poem about people of different cultures makes clear:'Ohl let us be glad of our dear wh;re skin ....'

American blacks also suffer in many treatments of them, their language, and their way of life.Cartoons and pictures frequently feature them as buffoons. They are almost always presented speaking a non-standard variety of English.In "Dab Kinzer' Dick Lee, the black boy who is Dab's 'man Friday" in ail his adventures, tries to speak "white folk's English' after his friends arrange for him to attend boarding school with them. His speech Is described as having "every wcrd slowly and carefully uttered,"Although many of the portrayals of blacks In St. Nicholas

51 stories follow the very stereotypes that modem children's literature tries to avoid, there is a clear effort to include blacks as a part of the society St. Nicholas seeks to build. Drawings depicting blacks are often included in Issues which have no stories or articles featuring them.Furthermore, fiction with only peripheral black characters is often accompanied by illustrations including those black characters. There is even evidence of some sensitivity to racial issues.In her Jack-Inthe-pulpit section, Dodge is telling readers about a very funny book called "The Ten little Niggers.' She introduces it by offering to share "the thrilling story it illustrates, if you'll allow me to change one little word throughout the pot.m, so as not to hurt anybody's feelings.' The poem is then printed as The Ten Little Black Boys."

In its early years St. Nicholas definitely undertook to introduce its readers to the world and its people.Its philosophy is probably stated rather clearly in the final lines of "Queer People," a poem about people from other cultures which appeared in 1876:

These are a few of the folks we have found,

How do you like their looks?

If you're not able to travel around,

You may meet them in your books.

But, among the people that we have seen,

The queerest of all are those

Who never notice their neighbors' ways,

But live in ignorance all their days,

Of fact which the whole world knows.

St. Nicholas may not have mays preached tolerance for other peoples and cultures, but it surely advocated a knowledge of them.

University of South Carolina

Works Cited

Chew, Samuel. Fruit Among the Leaves. New York: Appleton, 1950.

Dodge, Mary Mapes. St. Nicholas, 1-9, 11, 15.

Erisman, Fred.'St. Nicholas" in R. Gordon Kelly, ed., Children's Periodicals in the United States. Westport, CN: Greenwood, 1963.

Kelly, R. Gordon. Mother Was a Lamed .Westpo t, CN: Greenwood, 1974.

Roggenbuck, Mary June'St Nicholas' MagazineA Study of the Impact and Historical Influence of the Editorship of Mary Mapes Dodge.Diss. U of Michigan, 1976. Ann Arbor. UMI, 1987.76-19,228.

Sturges, Florence S.The St. Nicholas Years,' in Sin Andrews, ed., The Hewins Lech Iras:1947-1962.Boston: Horn Book, 1963.

e

52 The Clash between Cultural Values: Adult versus Youth on the Battlefield of 1-overty by Diana Chlebek

In her book on children's fiction and American culture in the first half of the nineteenth century, Anne Scott MacLeod raises the provocative question of intentionality:

Any view of reality in children's literature is refracted through adult attitudes toward children and society, with the result that juven" stories are often as suggestive for what they leave out as for what they include.Death and poverty, for instance, were a commonplace in the children's literature of antebellum America but no child character was seen to defy authority successfully. (10)

Early children's books were especially energetic in enforcing a 'Christian' view of poverty through allegories and parables that created an image of the poor as a class separate from the rest of society; this image was often reinforced by racial and ethnic prejudices that portray poverty as the peculiar burden of blacks, native Americans, or immigrants.

Modem authors of juvenile realistic fiction address the issue of poverty in the child's world from points of view that are opposed to the moralistic judgments in earlier children's literature.Until recently, Western society plied itself and its children with the sugared fantasies of Walt Disney, or cozy tales that focused on home and hearth. Not until the appearance of books such as Eleanor Estes' One Hundred Dresses was the issue of social discrimination arising from economic disparities squarely faced. From the first pages of the story, when Wanda's material and social status is described in school, Estes clearly shows that all children are victims of an insidious social stratification that is implicitly modeled on adult prejudices and values that spring up like toadstools in the course of the story:'Goggins Heights was no place to live,It was a good place to go and pick wild flowers in the summer, but you always held your breath till you got safely past old man Svenson's yellow house. People in the town said old man Svent,.n was no good. He didn't work ..." (9).Maddie, one of the poorest girls in the class, and a persistent tormentor of Wanda, eventually questions the values of the pecking order in her group, and, implicitly, in society at large.Ti-a poignant narrative is filtered through Maddie's point of view in small flashbacks. When the girls pay a visit to Wanda's home and reconstruct the details of her impoverished but dignified life, a social message is conveyed clearly and unobtrusively. The contrast between the characters of the two little girls, Peggybrusque and self-centered, Maddieguilt-ridden and empathetic, presents a moral choice to the reader. There is a note of hope in the bitter-sweet ending, when contact with Wanda is partly established through her gift of pictures to the two girls, after she has left the community. The realization that a friend has been lost for good underscores the pressing need for tolerance, understanding, and generosity in contact with the underprivileged.

Lois Lenski's observations of regional cultural differences prepare the way for an authentic social consciousness that goes far beyond abstractions and moralizing.Her message is truly democratic as she states in the Foreword to Cotton in My Sack:

I have heard many conflicting points of view in cotton economy, but my primary concern was human nature in action, controlled by an environment. (x)

The description of the Hutleys as a typical example of sharecropper mentality and material circumstances is dramatized by the common destitution of the rural ghetto. The Saturday spending spree in town acquires symbolic meaning:

All the things they saw took on a shining glory because they were within their reach rings, gold watches, bracelets, jewelry, anything.... can have that, I can have that,' she kept saying to herself. can have all these things if I want them.'(17) r 53 The environment and the system are Warned for the economic miseries that plague the sharecroppers, yet the message at the end places the burden of fiscal responsibility on the individual. To some extent, the economic misfortunes create a basis for individual growth and communal understanding, as the Hutleys and the Shands gradually realize that their survival depends on mutual assistance.

Ann Nolan Clsrk expanded awareness of social circumstances in children's fiction through a recreation of the values of other cultures.In MaQiC Money, she narrates the story of a Costa Rican boy's efforts to earn enough money to buy a present for his lonely grandfather. Although the author tries to convey such abstract concepts as money and work from the viewpoint of this particular culture, her depiction of a poverty- stricken country is whitewashed by a Western bias that defines progress as upward mobility based on cash values:

This was the day when Mama could buy Rosite shoes. Oh blessed Costa Rica! Good, kind country!Its poor could climb up sten by step, into the world the rich people lived. The poor could have shoes, houses, automobiles, anything that they could buy, if they could get the money. This was like that wonderful country called the United States.(37-38)

By the time Aimee Sommerfelt's My Name is Pablo was published, the woad at large had gone through enough social and economic upheaval so that third-world structures could be considered with greater equanimity and less ethnocentrism.In this novel, Pabio's plight becomes a symbol for the economic inequality in all impowished countries:

When I was in Norway," Mrs. Harbo said, had no idea that there were slums like this.I had to come to Mexico-" To Mexico!' interrupted Senor Ramon Indignantly. As if there were slums only in Mexico!In Asia, Africa, the whole of Latin Arnzrine.! Why, twc-thirds of the world is as poor as these boys.'(128)

What Ellis calls the rise of the working-class story in the sixties in British children's fiction (79) has a parallel in American juvenile novels. These are contemporary counterparts of the Lenski regional stories in that they focus on the plight of the rural poor.Burch's Oueenie Peavv examines social issues in terms of the emotional growth of Oueenie as she learns to take responsibility for her actions and discovers that her father is a bad model, that her hopes for the economic future of the family involving him are false ideals. Although the story has some description of the grim effects of the Depression, such as the debilitating consequences of malnutrition on the health of Little Mother, Oueenie's classmate, the basic social message of the book is a conservative one. When Oueenie becomes disitisioned with those dose to her, poverty spurs her to action-it becomes linked with the humiliation of her family. She embraces an individualistic ethic:"'I'll make something of myself! There's no telling what I can do if I try!" (151)

Where the Lilies Bloom stresses a grimmer aspect of rural poverty: the dog-eat-dog mentality of a community trying to scrape r urvival from the thin Appalachian soil. The Luther children instinctively mistrust the adult community-for good reasons. When they demonstrate their economic self-sufficiency by exploiting the riches of the land through wild-crafting, they must combat attempts by Kiser Pease and Mrs. McConnell to control the liver of the Me' ig money becomes a way of asserting their dignity, self-worth and freedom; charity Is seen as the worst form of servitude. Mary Call, the surrogate parent figure of the group comments dryly: "...charity is seldom of real service to those upon whom it is bestowed, and those who receive it are always looked upon with suspicion" (11). The struggle for survival matches the rhythm of the seasons in this environment, but ultimately it Is the momentum of man's emotions in the form of Kiser's desire for Devola, the lovely eldest Luther daughter, that saves the family.in the end, Mary Call's survival seems assured as she asserts her faith in education and in her intelligence to make more money and escape the net of poverty that controls her life.

With the appearance of Sounder in 1969, the plight of the rural Southern black was made evident, with all the accompawing horrors that racial bigotry had engendered. There Is an epic quality In the description of the courageous endurance of the family, but the boy's persistence in his search for father and dog shows a resistance that is in direct contrast to his mother's tradition-bound, fatalistic attitude of "We was born to lose, I reckon" (53).

54 Despite defeat of the father by poverty and by man's inhumanity, the ending indicates that the boy's education has taught him to go beyond helpless acceptance of destitution and death.Virginia Hamilton's M. C. Higgins the Great magnifies the declaration of hope and pride in the race.Helpful forces from the outside, in the character of the black folklorist, and from within, in the form of M. C.'s realization of his skills, show the black youth that he must stay and defend his birthright against the physical erosion of the slag heap, and the spiritual erosion of poverty and cultural despair.

The problems of destitute urban children are closely lin. to those of minority groups, particularly Hispanics and blacks; linguistic and cultural differences arc added to those of an unstable economic status.In Thomas Takes Charge, the struggle for physical survival as the children forage for themselves, after apparent abandonment by their father, produces an unexpected result:the emotional problems of Femanda, the agoraphobic sister who has been sheltered for many years by an overly-protective grandmother, are rderally exposed to the light of day when the children take off on their own. The resourcefulness of Tomas, confronted by specific economic choices to be made, emphasizes the need for a realistic attitude in the toughness of modem eAlstence. The children eventually gain enough confidence in their ability to survive to question their need for adults:

.. :Tomas ... felt warm and clean and not the least bit hungry. What if Femanda was right, and Papa did not come back? They would live here forever, just like this? (71)

John Rowe Townsend's novel, Trouble in the Jungle, deals with a parallel situation in an English ghetto. However, the social bureaucracy appears far less threatening than in Talbot's novel, where 'Welfare' presents an omnipresent terror for Tomas and Femanda. The adult guardians in the British novel are simply neglectful, far infericr to their child wards.Kevin, the child-narrator of the novel, takes an important step toward emotional maturation when he realizes that his stepmother's wretchedness is a burden for all society:

The truth was, I realized suddenly, that Doris was simply not equal to things.It wa a further development in my understanding. Poor soul, I thought, life's pretty grim for her.We'll have to carry her along somehow. (155)

This reversal of roles is an accurate reflection of the social reality in the ghetto, where the children of immigrants and unemployable or criminal parents learn to fend for themselves early in life.

Frank Bonham is a white author who presents an especially sympathetic portrayal of black youth in the urban ghetto. The Nitty Gritty portrays the black hero, Charlie, ?is an ambitious teenager in conflict with both parents and teachers. He doesn't share his father's pessimistic view of education as a shaky ladder for black ambition; however, his white teacher's wamings against get-rich quick schemes only spur Charlie on to more greater risks, since he mistrusts the man's high evaluations of his capabilities. As money becomes the price for escape from the Dcgtown ghetto, the desolate trash dump where the youth finds hems to sell is transformed into a treasure trove, in the same way that the garbage heap of food from the Market in Tomas Takes Charge becomes a cornucopia for the scrounging children. The reader is caught up in Charlie's excitement, comes to see the grim activities as "golden opportunities,' such as the sale of 'smack' or blood hansfusions for cash. When his uncle abandons him, the greyness of Dogtown overwhelms the teenager, and his father's cynical reaction to the failure of the scheme threatens to crush the boy: "Oh, shoot', his father said, What'd ycu think you was buying, U.S. Steel Stock?" (149).Eventually his teacher's positive values inspire Charlie to the constructive self-direction needed to escape the ghetto.Instead of a focus on the efforts of an aspiring individual, Bonham's Hey, Bits Spender confronts the issue of survival of an entire community. When the teenager Cool becomes the agent for Breathing-Man's one- man welfare project, he soon grows aware of the complications of social responsibility in dealing with poverty, and he eventually begins to share the community's view of the bureaucratic inefficiency of government charity:

Public Welfare ... clumsy machine dragging itself like a crippled elephant ... hurting almost as many as it helped . (95)

After Cool's aunt asserts the need to insure the survival and well-being of future generations through the establishment of a foster home, that Breathing-Man's "magic money' finally starts to have a ben "-Jai effect upon the

55 ghetto.Perhaps this vision of money as a catetyst for ever-expanding social good is an overly-rosy solution to poverty, but it does underscore the need fcr a balanced picttne of both extrinsic and intrinsic: causes of economic conditions. Modern children's authors challenge an era when adults tried to foist their social prejudices on children under the mask of 'teaching': by contrast, Lenski, the Cleavers, and Bonham, amongst other contemporary writers, probe social conflict at all levels of cuttura, no matter how painful the revelations may be for both child and adult.

Central Michigan University

Works Cited

Armstrong, William H. Sounder. New York:Harrow, 1969.

Bonham, Frank.Hey, Big Spender. New York:Dutton, 1972.

. The Nitty Gritty. New York:Dutton, 1968.

Burch, Robert. Queenie Peace. New York:Viking, 1966.

Clark, Ann Nolan. Magic Money. New York:Viking, 1950.

Cleaver, Vera and Bill.Where the Lilies Bloom.Philadelphia:Lippincott, 1969.

Ellis, Anne W. TheEarr Story in the 1960's. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1970.

Estes, Eleanor. The Hundred Dresses. New York:Harcourt, 1944.

Lenski, Lois.Cotton in My Sack.Philadelphia:Lippincott, 1949.

MacLeod, Anne Scott. A Moral Tale:Children's Fiction and American Culture:1820-1860. Hamden, Conn.: Archen, 1975.

Sommerfelt, Aimee. My Name is Pablo. New York:Criterion, 1966.

Talbot, Charlene. Tomas Takes Charge. New York:Lothrop, 1966.

Townsend, John Rowe. Trouble in the Jungle.Philadelphia:Lippincott, 1969.

CI 9

56 Fanny Fern and the Culture of F`: by Anne Scott MacLeod

"Fanny Fern" was the pen name used by Sara Payson Willis Parton, a determined, outspoken woman whose writing was extremely popular in the middle of the last century. She was born Sara Willis in 1811, darl,:hter of Nathaniel Willis, founder of the Youth's Companion, a long-lived juvenile periodical established in 1827.In 1838, Sara married Charles Eldredge, who died of typhoid in 1847, leaving her penniless, with two children to support. After a period of severe financial struggle, she made a marriage of convenience which soon proved disastrous. The marriage ended within a few years, and Sara was on her own again.

Daughter to one editor and sister to another (and abandoned by both after her divorce), she turned to writing to support herself, using the pseudonym "Fanny Fern." She wrote in a variety of forms, Including novels, children's stories and magazine articles, all of which quickly found an enthusiastic audience. By 1856, when she married James Parton, "Fanny Fern" was sufficiently established as a writer to be offered $100.00 a week to write a regular column for the New 'Irk Ledaer. The Ledger column, published weekly from 1856 until her death in 1872, was her most characteristic ,rk, consisting as it did of short sketches and essays full of social comment, most for a general public, some addressed to children.Parton's writing for children is usually damned as her worst, and there's no doubt that it is painfully sentimentallachrymose, as one critic put it.Yet in her sketches and stories about children is a wealth of information, not only on the wretched condition of poor children in the New York of her time, but about the emotional impact on American sockAy of urban poverty. The anger, the fear, even the sentimentality of Parton's writing about the children of poverty was representative of the response of many Americans to the discovery that a culture of poverty had established itself in the land of promise, a culture that destroyed children and, through children, threatened the future of the country.

In mid-nineteenth century America, as in the present, the problems of the age were more concentrated in New York.Heavy waves of immigration between 1840 and 1860 deposited thousands in the city who had neither skills, nor resources, nor even health and hope. There were few government agencies to help; workhouses, almshouses, and penitentiaries siphoned off only the most desperate and the most vicious of the city's destitute. The rest remained, housed in slums, exploited as cheap labor (if they had '"ck enough to find work at all), a blight on the city, a menace and a reproach to the respectable.

The problems were not entirely new, of course; industrialization had been proceeding apace since the 1830s, as had immigration of unskilled laborers.In the major industrial centers of the United States, an urban proletariat was already a reality by 1850.Yet consciousness of urban poverty, and especially conscious-less of its grim intractability, seem to have reached a new high in the 1850s. Above all, an awareness of the children of poverty and of their potential effect on the social order began to surface with increasing frequency, in both popular writing and children's literature, in the 18t0s.

And in fact, the children of the urban poor were hard to ignore. They lived on the streets and the docks and the woodpiles . ..very naturally," as Charles Loring Brace observed, since their homes were too wretched to bear (330). They were the highly visible, "little blue-lipped and barefooted children on the pavements" the Youth's Companion described (28.52(1855): 207); they were children who had "no one to care for them, and (who spent] their lives in the street, or in comfortless sheds and outbuildings, where you would think no human being could live (29.33(1855): 140).

Sara Parton wrote often of these waifs, addressing the chitd-en as well as the adults of more affluent classes.If her style was overstated, the destitution she chronicled could hardly be.

The poor, Fanny Fern told her "dear little readers," "live huddled together in garrets and cellars, half- starved, half-naked and dirty and wretched beyond what you, in your pure and happy homes, could ever dream of Little Ferns 94). A little girl in one of her stories was 'so filthy dirtyso ragged, that she scarcely looked like a human being" ... her hand "so bony it looked like a skeleton" (Little Ferns 48). To add to their miseries, the children of the poor were sometimes abused and often exploited by their parents.Clara's mother sent her out each

57 morning to beg, "or if she couldn't beg, to stealbut at any rate to bring home something unless she wanted a beating.Poor little Claralall alone threading her way through the great, wicked cityknocked and jostled about, so hungryso firedso frightened!'Little Ferns 49).

The pathetic children in Parton's fiction were meant as samples, not oddities; they represented the thousands of city urchins growing up in abject poverty"wretched" is the word Parton uses again and again to describe them. While her compassion was genuine, Parton, like many of her contemporaries, saw the situation of these children as more than just a tragedy for them:it was also a danger to the whole society.Poor children learned vice early.In the slums of New York, Fanny Fern told her child readers, "[children] are taught to be wicked . they are whipped and beaten for not being wicked.' A street boy, she pointed out in her column, might be "a boy In years, but a man in vicious knowledge" (Little Ferns 98).

Charles Loring Brace shared both her view and her alarm; he called the homes of New York's poor "nests in which the young fledglings of misfortune and vice begin their flight,' warning his fellow citizens that the fledglings would soon become "the dangerous classes" (65). The Children's Aid Society he founded in 1853 was an effort to prevent the awful harvest an uncaring society seemed to be sowing for the future. Twelve years later, Fanny Fern was still writing about the problem, in the same terms. She visited a slum, which she described as 'a little piece of hell," adding "how can those children ever get a chance to grow up anything but penitentiary inmates?" (New York Ledger 25 June 1863: n.p.)

What Parton and Brace (and many other Americans) were observing was the sociology of urban, industrial poverty. They were recognizing that poverty could and did create a culture of its own, sett-perpetuating, resistant to reform, impervious to sporadic private charity, and deeply destructive of orderly society. They saw that poverty often begot more poverty, that misery could induce, not an effort to improve, but the lassitude of hopelessness. They understood that suffering could be deeply corrupting."YesClara's mother was very cruel," Parton wrote,but God forbid, my little innocent children, that you should ever know how hunger, and thirst, and misery, may sometimes turn even that holy thinga mother's loveto bitterness" (Little Ferns 40).

To recognize the culture of poverty was not necessarily to sympathize with its victims. The association of pauperism and vice hardened as many hearts as it melted with compassion. Mid-century authors, including authors of children's stories, spoke often of the 'vicious poor,' the 'wicked poor,' who, "when congregated together, make poverty an excuse to sin." The writer who called herself 'Aunt Friendly' stiffened when she faced the "dreary alleys" of the cities where the poor and the wicked are huddled together, and grow poorer and more wicked as the long days go by(5).Contemplating the vices of the poor, some found it easy to blame the victims for their plight. 'Extreme want and the degradation of squalid poverty,' wrote one author,are generally confirmed to the vicious, the indolent and the grossly improvident.""Idleness and beggary," remarked T. S. Arthur,are next door neighbors to vice."(Maggie's Baby 36)

Even Parton's responses were mixed. Her own experience of impoverishment colored her view of the miseries she saw in New York. Her heart went out quickly to women and children, helpless as she had felt herself helpless, in a society where only men had real economic power. She considered women 'an abused class; .. .life for most women is a horrid grind," she wrote (New York Ledger 23 March 1860). She was less kindly disposed toward men. Rich or poor, men had the advantage over women and children, and Parton had small sympathy for those who brought their dependents low by dissipation, neglect of duty, or laziness.Her 1864 picture of a New York slum is graphically revolting, but the reader's empathy for the inhabitants runs a little cold when it meets Parton's characterization of the men.

There were slaughter-houses with pools of blood In front, and round which ambolled [sic] pigs and children; there were piles of garbage in the middle of the street, composed of cabbage stump, onion skins, potato paring, old hats and meat bones, cemented with cinders and penetrefed by the sun's rays, emitting the most beastly odors. Uncombed, unwashed girls, and ragged, fighting fads swarmed on every door-step, and emerged from rarrow, slimy alleys.Weary, worn- looking mothers administered hasty but well-timed slaps at draggled, neglected children, while fathers smoked, and drank, and swore, and lazed generally.

58 This is a long way from the glimpses of poverty to be found in early nineteenth century children's books. Then the poor were widows or orphans or honest working men in temporary trouble. Then the appeal was to individuals who as Christians and citizens gave to the poor-and took in return their gratitude and their blessings.

By mid-century, however, such simplicities were clouded with doubt.Besides Parton's jaundiced view of the male sex, what comes through in her sketch of a slum is the shade of despair that marked even sympathetic commentaries on urban poverty in the 1850s.Not only was there nothing genteel about this scene, there was also nothing of the humble-and grateful-air about its victims which might make charity rewarding. These wretches were neither poor-but-clean nor hard working-but-unfortunate. They were dirty, disorderly, immoral and unambitious. They were not in temporary need, but deeply mired in the self-perpetuating culture of poverty and their hopelessness induced a reciprocal pessimism even in those who wanted to help.

Parton was sympathetic, but she had few realistic solutions to propose in her stories about the children of poverty. Sometimes wealthy strangers adopted her pitiful fictional waifs. Sometimes, her little Bennies and Betseys and Glares founa temporary benefactors who proved that 'bright angels yet walk the earth'-though what happened the next day and the day after, Fanny Fem did not say (Little Ferns 49).Mostly, they died, in the snows of the streets or in the squalor of the slums, a reproach to the society that could not or would not help them. Sara Parton represented a dilemma of her time. She saw that chronic poverty was fundamentally a social problem, yet she beunged to a generation still strongly committed to individual moral responsibility, both for and by the pour.Even as she used her stories to criticize a social system, Parton appealed to individual conscience, trying to reach the hearts of her countrymen with sentimental tales of the suffering and death of little children.Like Dickens before her (though far less memorably), Parton made fiction about the children of poverty a vehicle for social protest. She hoped that a society roused to concern would find a way to save the children, if not the already doomed adults of the urban underclass.But the growing understanding of her time of the complex culture of urbaii poverty, an understanding she shared, cast a shadow over easy optimism. Simple Christian charity seemed no match for the moral decay that was the companion of industrial pauperism, and Parton was not alone in doubting that institutions were ideal places for children to grow up (Little Ferns 47-51).For twenty years, 'Fanny Fem" evressed herself, vividly, angrily and sentimentally, about children caught up in a cycle of physical destitution and rioral degeneration, but without finding answers. Her stories for and about children show a mind divided, as her society was divided, betwen compassion and despair at their plight.

University of Maryland

Works Cited

[Arthur, T. S.]Maggie's Baby and Other Stories.Philadelphia: n.p. 1852.

"Aunt Friendly."Poor Little Joe. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1860.

Brace, Charles Loring. The Dangerous Classes of New York and Twenty Years Among Them. New York: Wynkoop & Mallenbeck, 1812.

Parton, Sara.Little Ferns for Fanny's Little Friends. Auburn, NY: Derby and Miller, 1854.

. New York Ledger 23 March 1860.

. New York Ledger 25 June 1863.

. New York Ledger 25 June 1864.

59 S'oth and Thrift: or, the causes and correctives of social inequality.Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1847.

Youth's Companion. 28.52 (1955): 207.

. 29.33 (1855): 140. Crossing and Double-Crossing Cultural Barriers in Kip ling's Kim by Judith A. Plotz

Kip ling's Kim is arguably the greatest cross - cultural achievement in children's literature, arguably, as Nirad Chaudhuri has called it, "the finest story of India" ever presented to Western readers (47).Yet as a frankly colonialist work, however loving, Kim embodies the dilemma of all cross-cultural works in which one culture is normative, 9.3 other supplementary.Can the two cultures be presented as manifesting equal humanity? Must a colonialist fiction involve a diminution of humanity through what Jan Mohamed has called the "Manichean allegory" which "orientalizes" every member of the supplementary culture -nto a faintly comic foreigner, into an "Other"?Both in its great successes In presenting the fullness of Indian life and in its failures of reciprocity between East and West, Kim is an illuminating example of cross-cultural colonialist fiction.

Kim has been praised as the most richly inter-cultural of Kip ling's works. To Kinkead-Weekes, Kim 'embodies the urge to attain a deeper kind of vision, the urge not merely to see and know from the outside, but to become the 'other'" (217). To Jan Mohamed, the book "overcomes the barriers of racial difference better than any other colonialist novel" (78); to McClure, the Kipling of Kim "is able to see beyond the horizon of his times and portray a world of yet to be realized interracial harmony" (168). To Thompkins, Kim is doubly a "chain-man," for he is a link, "a bridge suspended for the passage of understanding between two territories of Kip ling's heart" (24).

Kimball O'Hara, as an adolescent inhabitant of the border territory between childhood and manhood, is a great crisscrosser of boundaries.In some ways he is deeply Indianfluent in Punjab, eloquent in Urdu, at home in Muslim and in Hindu dressbut of course he is not Indian:

Kim was English. Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped, uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar, Kim was whitea poor white of the very poorest. (3)

Nor is he exactly English either.Not only was his first English teacher a German (162) but both Kim's parents were Irish, a heritage the narrator uses to explain the boy's curiosity ("Irish enough by birth to reckon silver the least part of any game" [61]) and a heritage which marks his kinship to the colonized as well as the colonizers.Kim's father, the alcoholic sergeant turned opium addict, was also something of a cultural boundary crosser for he was both Roman Catholic and Freemason (4, 183).

So flexible are the boundaries of Kim's identity"What am I?Musolman, Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist?" (234) that he seems to don a new consciousness with each set of new clothes. Sometimes he appears in "Hindu kit, the costume of a low-cat ce street boy' (7) or moves invisible among crowds as "a Hindu urchin in a dirty turban and Isabella-colsured clothes" (27).Sometimes he is a young sahib in "a white drill suit" (204), sometimes "a Eurasian lad ...in badly -fitting shop-clothes" (240).With Mahbub All Kim is from the first, "externally at least, a Mohammedan" (214) and is eventually rewarded with a splendid set of Pathan clothes, appropriate border-garb with the explicitly Afghan, northern Indian, and even Russian elements:

There was a gold-embroidered Peshawur turban-cap, rising to a cone, and a big turban- cloth ending in a broad fringe of gold.There was a Delhi embroidered waistcoat to slip over a milky-white shirt, fastening to the right, ample and flowing; green pajamas with twisted silk waist-string; and that nothing might be lacking, russia-leather slippers, smelling divinely, with arrogantly curled tips. (279-280)

Though he knows or seeks to know all the castes of India, he is hound to none and drawn to all.Kim cfsnies conviction both as an "ash-smeared. wild-eyed" faquir and as the Buddhist lama's faithful chela.But even at his most Buddhist, with his "sad-coloured, sweeping robes, one hand on his rosary and the other in the attitude of

-

61 benediction,' Kim reminds the English narrator of nothing so much as the very English "young saint of a stained- glass window' (520).

The orphan child of white parents, Kim I; also the adoptive child of many substitute parents. As Lionel Trilling notes, Kim "is full of wonderful fathers, ell dedicated men in their different ways, each representing a different possibility of existence" (123).Kip ling's own father is the model for the Lahore museum curator.Father Victor of the Mavericks (who knew Kim's real father) paternally entrusts the boy to Colonel Creighton who, along with Lurgan and Hurree Babu, acts as Kim's father in the art and craft of the Great Game. Equipping Kim like a Pathan even to the "mother -of- pearl, nickelplated, self-extraciing .450 revolver," Mahbub All calls him "my son" and gives him an affectin=te paternal blessing:"please God, thou salt some day kill a man with it" (280.281). The lama returns from the brink of death and of triumphant merging into the Great Soul in order to rescue Kim as the "Son of my Soul' (473) from bondage to the Wheel. There is a maternal presence as well. The Sahiba nurses Kim with all a mother's affection and Kim gives her a son's gratitude:"'Maharanee,' Kim began, but led by the look in her eye, changed it to the title of plain love'Mother, I owe my life to thee" (453).Indeed Kim regards all India as his family. When asked "And who are thy people," he replies, "This great and beautiful land" (222).

All India, especially that which is out of bounds, seems Kim's province.Kim habitually moves in and out of restricted areas, delighting inthe stealthy prowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the crawl up a water-pipe, the sights and sounds of the women's world on the flat roofs, and the headlong flight from housetop to housetop uncer cover of the hot dark" (6).His first appearance "in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah" (3) is, as Kinkead-Weekes has noted, 'emblematic" (216):English Kim sits where his playmates, Hindu Chota Lal and Muslim Abdullah cannot. While the other boys fear the new and unfamiliar lama, Kim delights in novelty and plunges into the museum. Kim is continually moving in and out of secluded precincts, venturing in and out of restricted areas in defiance of various municipal and cultural orders.In Lucknow, Kim rides high in the cab as a sahib, but breaks decorum to leap down intothe road headlong, patting the dusty feet" of his lama (198).Kim moves in and out of school, now a sahib In a white drill suit, now a wondering native. He almost moves in and out of his own skin, sometimes as pale as his Irish genes dictate, sometimes as dark as th( fierce sun and the dyes of the bazaar can make him.He is a border violator who riskily intrudes into the army camp and later, at much greater risk, into the "mysterious city of Bikaneer" (278) which he clandestinely maps.

Just as its protagonist is a crosser of borders, so does the novel Km incorporate diversity. The epigraph to chapter 8 praises "Allah Who gave me two/Separate sides to my head" (214) and that to chapter 14 pays tribute to the power to hear r:ie universal human meaning in many languages, many creeds:

My brother kneels (so saith Kabir)

To stone and brass in heathen-wise,

But in my brother's voice I hear

My own unanswered agonies. (410)

This harmony of multitudes is further promoted by the structure of the work as a road novel. The Grand Trunk Road spreads all India before Kim and the reader:

And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle.It runs straight bearing with it India's traffic for fifteen hundred milessuch a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world.... There were new people and new sights at every stridecastes he knew and castes that were altogether out of his experience. They met a troop of long-haired, strong-scented Sansis with baskets of lizards and other unclean food on their backs.... Then an Akalsi, a wildeyed, wild-haired Sikh devotee In the blue- checked clothes of his faith, with polished steel quoits glistening on the cone of his tall blue turban.... Here and there they met or were overtaken by the gaily dressed crowds of whole villages.... Kim was in the seventh heaven of joy. The Grand Trunk at this point was built on an embankment ... so that one walked, as it were, a little above the country, along a stately corridor, seeing all India spread out tc left and right. (94-104)

62 This clear emphasis on the glorious multip:icity of Indian life makes it possible to read Kim as a cross- cultural Bildunqsroman in which the adolescent's longsought Identity is achieved through a synthesis of the multitudinous experience of 'all India spread out to left and right' and of the many modes of being offered by his Indian and British father-substitutes.In such a reading, Kim is the ideal Anglo-Indian, the idealized embodiment of what Kipling would have liked an inhabitant of British India to be(Kettle 214), be a good British subject as well as a loving son of India because so clearly identified with the wholeness of India in a way no individual Indianbound by caste or religioncould ever be.

This buoyantly cheerful cross-cultural reading, however, suppresses Km's comingof-age in the role of a spy, a secret agent. The rules of the Great Game force on Kim a role that impedes fully human communion between him and the Indian world.

Kim's temperament as it is put to use by the British excludes him from true fellowship with India.Kim is above all a watcher. He Is repeatedly characterized as one who sees unseen. He is a watcher in the shadows, lithe and inconspicuous' (6), like a shadow" (22).Repeatediy 'Kim watched ... considering and interested' (23); Kim "kept his watchful eye" (51) or "watched between drooped eyelids" (116). He regularly stations himself out of sight to watch others. At the museum he is the hidden observer: 'Kim laid himself down, his ear against a crack in the heatsplit cedar door, and, following his instinct, stretched out to listen and watch' (13).In Mahbub All's camp, Kim, unseen, spies on the spy searching the tent:'Kim with one eye laid against a knot-hole In the planking ... had seen the Delhi man's search through the boxes' (42-43).After delivering the message to Creighton, "flat on Ns belly lay Kim' (62) to watch the British officers.Again lurking in shadow 'behind the thick trunks in the cool dark of the mangotope" (130), then "belly -flat" by the messtent door (137), Kim watches the Mavericks.

It is his watchfulness that marks Kim as truly British.In the world of Kim the British are the masters of clear vision.It is the English museum director who gives the lama a marvelous pair of spectacles: 'How scarcely do I feel theml How dearly do I seer (31)It is the English museum director who sees and comprehends all Asia as he presides over photographs even of the tara's distant Tibetan monastery, even of the little door through which we bring wood before wiener. And thouthe English know of these things?" (14)It Is the Englishman who presides over the "mighty map,' compiled by Europeans, on which he points out to the learned old Buddhist the Holy Places of Buddhism" (15).Colonel Creighton and Hurree Babu watch India overtly through the Ethnological Survey, covertly through the Secret Service.Kim by instinct is also an ethnological surveyor; he leads the lama Into the museum with the exhilarated sense that "he is new (11) and therefore something to investigate further:precisely as he would have investigated a new building or a strange festival.... The lama was his trove' (22).District Superintendent Strickland, also of the Secret Service, Is so indefatigable a watchc and so persuasive a tempter that he gets the Sahiba. the embodiment of Mother India, to remove her veil (124). The English in Kim see all the world unveiled; they "know of these things" (14). The English are scientific investigators, the knowers, the masters of ethnography; the Indians are the known, the seen, the collected materials of ethnography, the mere objects of scrutiny.

In training for the Great Game, Kim teams to cultivate his natural watchfulness so as to see without being recognized as an English boy or as a conscious looker. He must learn to see without provoking response; he must always perceive what he looks at as Other, never allowing his own humanity to be engaged in a redprocal gaze. During the encounter In which Mahbub Ali first recommends Kim to Creighton as a candidate for the Game, the three look at each other:

(1

Here Kim watches Mahbub who watches Creighton who watches Kim. None acknowledges the humanity of the other ('no glimmer of recognition') but each contemplates the other as an object for possible use and control. Assessing vision such as this Is what enables a surveyor, a 'chain-man' such as Kim becomes, to map and thereby control new territory: by merely marching over a country with a compass and a level and a straight eye,' a boy

63 could 'carry away a picture of that country which might be sold for large sums" (267). The surveying, controlling, acquisttive 'straight eyes marks the ethnographer and the spy.

Kim's natural aptitude for seeing Is matched by his equal resistance to being seen and controlled. The resistance is partly manifested in his talent for disguise:Kim can pass as a low-caste Hindu street boy, a Musiim ostler, a crazed faouir, or the lama's disciple. More strikingly, however, Kim is designated as an agent of rare promise when he wtthstands Lurgan's controlling hypnotic vision. As the only boy I could not make to see things" (283), Kim resists becoming the object of Lurgan's vision; he will not consent to see the 'Jken jar as whole:

'Look!It is coming into shape,' said Lurgan Sahib.

So far Kim had been thinking in Hindi, but a tremor came on him, and with an effort like that of a swimmer before sharks, who hurls himself half out of the water, his mind leaped up from a darkness that was swallowing it and took refuge in-the muttiplication table in English!

"Look!It is coming into shape,' whispered Lurgan Sahib.

The jar had been smashed-yes, smashed-not the votive word-he would not think of that-but smashed into fifty pieces, and twice three was six, and thrice thre,../ was nine, and four times three was twelve. He clung desperately to the repetition. The shadow-outline of the jar cleared like a mist after rubbing eyes. There were the broken shards; there was the split water drying in the sun, and through the cracks of the veranda showed ail ribbed, the white house-wall below-and thrice ;delve was thirty -six.(251.252)

Kim's resistance to Lurgan's mastery involves shifting from a yielding accepting Indian consciousness to his re-istant isolated British consciousness which Is associated with the reductiveness and the control of arithmetic.Clear vision !n Kim belongs to the British-to the rz:_lm of rationality, numeration, isolation, and control.But this clear vision involves throwing off any reciprocity and mutual recognition.

What further impedes Kim's participation in the thoroughly reciprocal cross-cuttural world Is the conditional nature of almost all of his relationships. Though Trilling may be right that the "charm' of each of the several surrogate-fathers possessed by Kim is that the boy need not commit himself to one alone" (123), this charm is also something of a curse. The "fathers' are almost all 'father - figures' or 'father instruments' to be used to farther specific aspects of Kim's education and initiation into the Great Game. When Father Victor praises Creighton as "a good man" for aiding the boy, the ethnographer-spy candidly responds:Not In the least.Don't make that mistake. The lama has sent us money for a definite end" (185).Creighton too seeks the boy for a definite end, a use, and not out of human kindness. To his British trainers, Kim is a mere agent, highly valued for his function but only for his function. Though with Mahbub All Kim develops from disposable .ttensil to cherished near-son, the threat of mutual betrayal remains present throughout the relationship:'Wilt thou some day sell my head for a fe,v sweetmeats if the fit takes thee?' (3271 ;',1ahbub asks Kim.

Kim's dearest relationship, ultimately presenting half more as a duty than an interesting investigation, is that with the lama. Yet that cherished relationship Is also tumed to the purposes of the 6:eat Game. Kim manipulates the lama, urging hirt to travel into the mountains, much as Mahbub All and Creighton have manipulated Kim. The lama's spiritual search is turned to the ends of the Game. That Kim loves and, even while loving, betrays the lama; that he can use him as an object even as he loves him as a father, shows that the boy has fully mastered the tradecraft.He has intemalized the duplicity that makes him a perfect spy; but the double burden of loyalties precipitates his breakdown after the descent from the mountains.

Kim's breakdown and recovery at the close of the novel are open to conflicting interpretations. On the one hand, it may be suggested, as Blackburn has argued, that the adolescent Kim is at last wing born into his long- sought adutt Identity which synthesizes the values of both the cultures he has known and served and that the boy, in Mahbub All's formulation, 'sure of Paradise, can yet enter Government service' (467).Yet, on the other hand, the

64 breakdown may suggest that the boy has broken under the unendurable burden of two cultures which cannot be reconciled. Though Kipling does not everywhere take this view, in Kim he makes plain that real cultures are not simply spectaclesfor to admire an' for to see" but complex sets of binding obligations (Verses 356). The kilta of letters weighs Kim down with his obligations to the British way; the heavy body of the old lama weighs Kim down with his obligations to the Asia:, way. The British duty, appropriately enough, is written, formal, abstract; the Asian duty is fully embodied in a beloved person. Together they are too much.Kim's strength suddenly gives out under this double burden of equally imperative, equally heavy duties. The closest Kim has come to being both a perfect Indian and a perfect Briton is in being a perfect spy; but it is this state of cross-cultural double-cross that breaks him down. Though Kim recovers, the recovery promises no synthesis. Indeed the novel stops abruptly "it' stopped, Kipling told his father about the end of the novel (Something of Myself 137)as if to cut off any vision of an adult Kim living successfully in two worlds, as if such a prospect were unimaginable.

George Washington University

Notes

1John Le Came has acknowledged the influence of Kim on his distinguished espionage novels in which love, betrayal, and game-playing are intertwined. The protagonist of Le Carre's most recent book, A Perfect SPY (1986), is Magnus Pym, a charming betrayer of everything he most loves.Pym's name and characteristics suggest that Le Came perceives him as a grown.up "great Kim."

Works Cited

Blackburn, William."Internationalism and Empire:Kim and the At. of Rudyard Kipling."Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Conference of the Children's Literature Association U of Toronto March 1979Ed Priscilla Ord .,anova: Villanova UP, 1980.78-85.

Chaudhuri, Nirad."The Finest Story about Indiain English."Encounter 13 (April 1957): 47-53.

Jan Mohamed, Abdul R."The Economy of Manichean Allegory. The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature:Critical Inquiry 12 (Autumn 1985): 59-87.

Kettle, Arnold."What is Kim?" The Morality of Art.Ed. D. W. Jefferson.NY: Barnes & Noble, 1969. 210-221.

Kinkead-Weekes, Mark."Vision in Kip ling's Nove:s."Kip linq's Mind and Art.Selected Cntical Essays. Ed. Andres Rutherford.Stanford: Stanford U P, 1964.197-234.

Kipling, Rudyard.Kim. The Writings in Prose and Verse of Rudyard Kipling 19. New York. 9:;"01.er's, 1916.

. Something of Myself. New ;ork: Doubleday, 1937,

Verses 1889 -1896. The Writings in Prose and Verse of R idvard Kipling 11, New York. Scribner's, 1916.

McClure, John.'Problematic Presence. The Colonial Other in Kipling and Conrad.' The Black Presence in English Literature. Ed. David Dubydeen. Manchester: Manchester U P, 1985.154-167.

Thompkins, J. M. S. The Art of Rudyard Kipling.Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1959.

Trilling, Lionel."Kipling." The Liberal Imagination.1950. Garao City, NY: Doubleday, 1953.120-129.

C

65 Adolescents as Instruments of Change: The English-language Novel Set in Post-independence India by Meena Khorana

The colonial tradition glamorized by the novels of Rudyard igpling and Dhan Mukerjee is perpetuated by both contemporary Western and Indian authors writing in English. The realities of post-independence India determine the content of the adolescent novel set in India. Soon after Independence from the British in 1947, Prime Minister Nehru's cabinet laid out elaborate Five Year Plans to ensure a government-controlled industrial development. The attempts of Tagore and Gandhi to rediscover the roots of Indian culture could not withstand the Western orientation of the English-speaking elite.Since only two percent of the literate population uses English as its first language (Singh 112), authors woo Western readers who are still fascinated by 'exotic' India. Some Indian writers, fully aware of this appeal, exploit it, piling on local colour, explaining and expatiating upon Indian customs, detailing recipes of Indian dishes, describing sarees and outlining the colourful rituals of an Indian wedding" (Williams xvi).

These divergent trends make social and national progress a compelling theme in children's novels by both Western and Indian writers. The adolescent protagonists, mainly boys, become the vehicles through which this inherited colonial legacy is reflected. The novel thus becomes didactic and highly stereotypical. Each novel has a definite agenda; whether it is to promote education, technology, medicine, or a more modem outlook, it is the young hero who is burdened with fulfilling it.

The setting of most of these novels is rural. When a book does have an urban locale, it is set in the poverty-stricken areas. The novels are hence a sociological investigation into village attitudes.Reporter-Eke, authors catalog the features of village lifechild marriages, drought, dependence on the monsoons, and superstitions against technology. Despite these deplorable conditions, there is a strong opposition to progress by the older generation. Passive acceptance and a reluctance to change their traditional ways make villagers unfit to survive in modem times. 'What can I do if God is angry with us? Man cannot change His will' (Life of Keshav 9) s the typical attitude.In each novel the young hero overcomes opposition and finds a successful means of bringing prosperity to his family and becomes a symbol of hope to his community.

A major theme in these novels is the education of village youth. With a literate population of only 245 million, or 36 percent of the total population, the lack of educational facilities in villages is a prime hindrance to progress. As in her earlier novel, Ramu, the Story of India, Indian scholar and author Rama Mehta narrates village boy's quest for education in The Life of Keshay. Education comes to the village of Bed la when a school teacher gives night classes in Hindi.Kethav, the hero, is an avid student and he realizes the possibilities of learning.His dream of going to a proper school is fulfilled when a rich benefactor sponsors him to go to a school in the city of Udaipur. At first there is opposition from his mother because acquiring an education imposes a rather long period of economic dependence. Keshav doesn't get enough time from his household chores to do his schoc"work and burning oil to study at night is expensive."'School, school, that is all you think about. What good is your teaming to *us if you can't share the responsibilities of the household? Throw those books aside', said Ganga reaching out to snatch them from his hands' (74).Once Ganga sees the future job possibilities for Keshav, she makes untold sacrifices to fulfill his dream.

To Keshav himself, education has been at best a mixed blessing. He is teased cruelly by the rich city boys for his village attire rad because he is married at the age of fourteen.His education alienates his village friends and, but for Ajay, the son of his benefactor, the vast social and economic gap prevents him from making friends at school. With hard work he comes first when he graduates from high school. When the novel ends, the author hints that Keshav might go to engineering school.

Twelve-year-old Raman in "What Then, Raman?' is not so lucky. He is forced to assist his mother when his father goes to the city to look for a job.His father understands his dream of becoming a scholar and promises Raman that he can resume school once there is money:"It is important to dream as well as to work. When I was your age I, too, dreamed of becoming more than a woodcutter like my father before me. That is why I wanted you to go to school when you were old enough, so that for you it might become more than just a dream" (36). When

67 Raman confides hi.) dream to the missionary teacher from America, she chaonges him to think of what he will do with his education.

The authc also broaches the issue of girls' education. With nearly eighty percent illiteracy among women, the missionary tries to counter the argument that girls don't need to read and write because they will eventually get married. But it will not be wasted. They will marry and keep house, it is true, but they will teach their children.... And then too, Raman, in our school we teach many things besides reading and writing:how to farm, and how to raise better crops, and how to build new houses; and for girls, how to prepare better meals, now to care for those who are ill ... (12). Raman is convinced and he starts teaching his young sister and her friends.His life takes on a new meaning when he remembers "the heady sense of satisfaction each time he finished a lesson with Vasanti, each time he saw the knowledge growing in her and knew that it was he who helped it to grow' (162).

The Day the River Spoke, a short fictional work by Kama la Nair, also has the education of village girls as its theme. Young Janu is a typical village girl: she looks after siblings and helps her mother with the housework, but she also has an inquisitive mind. She wants to know why young fish in the paddy fields turn to frogs, why yellow spiders hide in yellow flowers, and where the river goes. Yet no one allows her to study ecause the fruits of education are distant and, in the case cf girls, unrecognizable. The murmurous voice of the river offers her a solution:'Seems to me little girls can e as much as little boys.... You just skip along one morning and sit there in the school and listen to what's going on, and maybe the teacher will !et you stay." The teacher is so impressed by Janu's clever answer to a difficult question that he persuades her father to let her attend schoc' Janu is ecstatic and vows that she will open her own school for village girls.

Another recurrent theme is the introduction of technology in Indian villages: scientific methods of farming, distribution of high yield seeds, promise of dams and canals, and the use of tractors and other equipment.

Anita Desai's The Village by the Sea is set in Thul, a fishing village near Bombay. The presence of a tractor loaded with pipes presages an end to the "peaceM" village life for the older generation, but it becomes a symbol of hope for young.,ters who are disenchanted with poverty and a lack of ready cash and steady jobs. They have abandoned fishing, the trade of their fathers, and their only salvation is in working for the proposed fertilizer factory.Had, the protagonist, is divided between tho two options:the traditional way with its starvation and perpetual want or working in the factory for regular wages, with its inevitable loss of land, independence and, perhaps, human dignity.Hari sees no hope at home with a drunken, ineffectual father, a sick mother, and two sisters to provide dowries for.Bitter and discontented, he makes a daring bid to enter the adult world in a meaningful way by running away to Bombay.

On leaving Thul, Hart's mind expands; e 'n the bullock-cart driver who gives him a ride has heard of the unlikely word 'fertilizer."The driver understands that due to overpopulation the old economy has to change. "Now we want everything to come from the shops, ready made. No more spinning of yarn, no more grinding of wheat at home-no more making of ccw-dung cakes or compost' (71).

In Bombay, Had sees a different type of human misery-overcrowding, filth, child labor, beggary and crime. He takes what the city can offer him-a job in a third-rate restaurant and training in watch-mending-and longs to return to his village. He say os enough money in one year to star. a watch repair shop in an industrialized Thul and a small poultry farm that his sisters can manage. The boo't explicates the Darwintan theory of survival of the fittest. Had and the villagers have to adapt just as the city pigeons have done."The wheel turns and turns and turns.it never stops and stands still' says Mr. Panwallah.You are young. You can chw,ge and learn and grow. Old people cannot, but you can. I know you will" (129).

Hart's journey to Bombay has gained him an identity, maturity and economic inilependence. As an affirmation of technology he returns to hi:, village by bus and then annoints himself with the sweet waters of the well. "He felt like a new person, like someone who had emerged from a tightly shut box and now saw the light and felt the breeze for the first time.He could have been newly born-a butterfly emerging from a cocoon" (140). He returns in time for the festival of Diwali; Eke the hero cf the epic Ramavana, his return symbolizes domestic happiness arm material wealth.

68 Medical treatment is another aspect of life in India that is depicted in books for children. The village in each story is without a doctor and the people rely on home remedies, burning red chilies to exorcise the evil spirits, praying to the goddess, or visiting the medicine man for cures.In each case, the authors remind the reader that it is the medicine obtained from the city doctor that has cured the patient. When Gulab has a severe attack of jaundice, the doctor scolds Keshev: "What good are you if you don't use your intelligence? You know, don't you, that village medicines gotten from the midwife are useless? Next time use your education" (Keshav 177-178). The villagers of Thus are similarly at the mercy of the "sharp kinking' medicine man. His arrogance, his pills and potions, the author tells us, 'gave him the air of a magician, or witchcraft" (Village 51).In spite of the food, attention, and payment of a silver ring, all he gives them is holy ash. The mother is cured only when she is admitted to the nearest city hospital where she is given free treatment for anemia.

Two novels by Aimee Sommerfelt, who spent a few years in India, deal with the lack of medical facilities for India's poor.In The Rcad to Agra thirteen-year-old La lu takes his younger sister Maya on a 300-mile journey to Agra to get treatment for her failing eyesight. At first, the father opposes the plan with: "God will never allow Maya to go blind unless it is ordained that she shall go blind' (26), but the grandmother encourages La lu to take this bold step. After encountering a series of stereotypical situations that one associates with Indiacobras, camels, performing bears, thieves and even a maharajah's son on an elephantthey reach Agra only to be rudely turned away by the hospital gatekeeper. As they leave the city in disappointment, they are helped by the UNICEF and WHO crew who are distributing free milk and medicines to the lepers and the poor. Astonished at such generosity, La lu is condescendingly told that 'Far, far away from here there is a country where everyone has plenty of food....If some child or other in that far-away country decides that he doesn't want an ice-cream cone and gives the money to UNICEF instead ... then you will get a glass of buffalo milk" (175). Nurse Astrid then introduces Ulu and Maya to the Indian lady doctor who takes charge of their board and lodging and Maya's treatment."1 think,' said Dr. Prasad, 'that India is the worid's most unfortunate country if she can't wen help her own children" (178).Lalu's story is continued in the sequel The White Bungalow where the author places La lu in an all-or-nothing choice between traditional village life, which he now considers worthless and the profession of a doctor.

These adolescent heroes are, thus, the harbingers of a new age for their famines and communities. This faith placed in Indian youth reflects the promise of a New India after 200 years of foreign domination. Adolescence, a transitional phase from childhood to adult thus becomes a metaphor for the moment of change for India.Most of the books discussed above follow the home-adventure-home pattern in the initiation of male protagonists into society. Had, Lalu, Keshav and Raman are recognized as adult members of society not by assimilating the values of the older group but by rejecting them, just as newly-independent India hoped to be accepted by the world community.

These adolescents, though interesting and admirable in their determination to reach their goals, are, nevertheless, one-sided. We see them only in their sociological roles.Other aspects of adolescence, such as interest in the opposite sex, rebellion against parents, conflicts between Western and Indian social values, Especially in the area of dating and arranged marriages, which would Le more relevant to the urban, well-to-do reading audience in India, are not even mentioned.

Ultimately, it is the realties of publishing for children in India that determine the content of the books written by Indian authors and force them to seek a Western audience. Even though todia is the waders seventh largest publisher of books, only three percent the books are for children (Nair, 'Promoting" 1), hence, publishing for children is not economically feasible. Once publishin6 for children gains maturity, specialists in the field hope that authors will avoid imitative writing and draw on the cultural heritage, based on a synthesis of science and philosophical content of social traditions and customs prevailing in different regions of the country (Gupta 1).

Coppin State College

Works Cited

Arora, Shirley L."What Then, Raman?" Chicago:Follett, 1960.

Bibliography of Children's Books Published in India. New Delhi:Children's Book Trust, 1983. Desai, Anita. The Village by the Sea.Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1985. Heinemann, 1982.

Gupta, Brehm P.'Meeting the Challenge of Education Through Literatuie for Children.'Writer and Illustrator 5 (1986):1-2.

Mehta, Rama. The Life of Keshav, a Family Story from India. New York:McGraw-Hill, 1969.

Ramu, A Story of India. New York: McGraw, 1966.

Nair, Kama la. The Day the River Spoke. New Delhi:National Book Trust, 1978.

"Promoting Children's Books in the Republic of India."Printed for Children: World Children's Book Exhibition. Munchen: K. G. Saur, 1978: 9.

Singh, Tejeshwar.'Publishing in India:Crisis and Opportunity'. Publishing in the Third World: Knowledge and Development. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1985: 111-130.

Sommerfelt, Aimee. The Road to Agra. New York:Criterion, 1961.

. The White Bungalow. New York:Criterion, 1964.

Williams, Haydn Moore. Studies in Modem Indian Fiction in English, Vol. 1.Oalcutia:Writer's Workshop Publication, 1973.

70 Virginia Hamilton's Symbolic Presentation of the Afro-American Sensibility by David L Russell

Virginia HamiLn is most vexing when, in the midst of meticulously-detaile' - alistrc description, she introduces elements which sorely try her readers' credulity. Take, for instance, the ,narvelous solar system created by Mr. Pool for Junior Brown in a forgotten basement room of the school, or the intrusion of the ghost of Brother Rush into Tree's otherwise uneventful life.Not all critics graciously accept these fanciful tums of plot.David Rees, for one, complains of the ghost's presence in Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush:"The use of the supernatural seems like a cheap short cut to give Tree knowledge: the author should have found a more convincing way of imparting informa,,on .. .' (182). On the other hand, Rees applauds M. C. Higgins, the Great (176), even though that work contains material nearly as fanciful.Paul Heins has remarked that Hamilton herself is not sure whether she realist; actually, she often feel- that she is a symbolist. One might call her an inventor' (347).Hamilton has, perhaps, invented her own kind of fiction, which is especially suited to her penetration of the Afro-American character and to her exploration of the Afro-American experience.Hamilton's books areas is so much of adolescent fiction stories of survival, of people teaming to get along in the world. Her fiction is not so much a vehicle of social protest, as is that of so many black writers, but rather it is tit.. impassioned portrayal of individuals in the process of getting along in the world. Through her use of symbolism, this process unfolds as an almost mythic enactment of the Afro-American wig ,Ind means for survival.

In M. C. Higgins, the Great (1974), Hamilton effectively created a symbolic presentation of her concept of the Afro-American sensibility, in which survival is achieved through the hero's coming to terms with two fundamental precepts:realizing the importance of his cultural heritage, which informs him that he has something worth preserving, and understanuing the importance of the sense of community, which assures him that his plight is not a singular one and success depends upon individuals striving together. Through these two precepts, the hero acknowledges the will to survive, imparted by the past, and the means to survive provided by the communal spirit of the presentHe thus becomes capable of initiating positive action and inspiring others to Join him in that action to face the future.In Hamilton's vision of the Afro-American sensibility, the hero is ennobled through acknowledging his past and through accepting the communal spirit (significantly not through undertaking an individual heroic effort). Consequently "man existence is given meaning finally by decisive and deliberate action.

To find the sources of this vision, we may benefit from what Janice E. Hale has said of African culture: 'Two guiding principles characterize the African ethos:survival of the tribes and the oneness of being. A deep sense of family or kinship characterizes African social reality' (48).Hamilton's characters typically find their identity to be inextricably tied to that of their famiiy. The African tradition is in sharp contrast to Western culture which has generally elevated individualism over the bonds of family. The Afro-American emphasis on these ties was certainly fostered by the more recent historical experience of slavery, which frequently deprived blacks of any meaningful family structure, making family perhaps more fervently craved in the Afrc-American cultural tradition.By extension, as the family heritage is crucial, so is the tribal heritage, or one's roots in general. Among the most important steps a social group must take to establish its identity is the celebration of its history, the glorification of Its origins.For the individual, this means grasping an understanding of the motivations I desires of one's ancestors.In a similar vein, the sense of community is frequently stronger in the black culture than in the white. This may result from a natural tendency for members of an oppressed or minority group to bind together, as well as from the African sense of 'oneness of being' which denies the extremes of Western Individualism. Rudine Sims speaks of 'a traditional awareness of the ties that bind disparate members of [black] families and communities together' (70).The ties that bind the black community are at once more intense and more enduring than the communal relationships typical of white American society.

In M. C. Higgins, the Great, Hamilton illustrates symbolically the coming to terms with these two cultural precepts enabling her hero to assert himself by the novd's conclusion. On the surface, little happens in the novel. A mere 48 hours pass in the book's 220-plus pages, and in those 48 hours, a boy, living on an isolated mountain, watches over his younger siblings while his parents work, shares moments with a friend from a nearby hill, and

71 meets two strangers-a wandering girl, Lurhetta Outlaw, and a folk music collector, the "dude' Lewis. The exhaustive detail seems further to impede the plot, yet the lack of momentum is appropriately suggestive of M. C. Higgins' own inability to act-an inability he must overcome in order to join the ranks of the survivors.

The opening chapter is permeated with aerial imagery; everything seems to soar upward. 'Mayo Cornelius Higgins raised his arms high to the sky and spread them wide,' the novel begins,he was M. C. Higgins, higher than everything" (9).Later on, he and his friend, Ben Kil !bum, are, in fact, airborne, swinging on vines (16).M. C. goes up "Sarah's High Path" (22) to his mountain home, "a great swell of earth rising to outline the sky" (25).But the ultimate image is, of course, M. C.'s forty-foot pole and Its sparkling height" (26).From atop this pole, M. C. can sit on a bicycle seat, pedal two tricycle wheels and sway through the air and daydream. There on his pole, pedaling and swaying, he is "truly higher than everything on the outcropping' (29). There he has the pleasant "sensation of falling free ... (29).His thoughts drift to his ancestress, Sarah, who first came to the mountain. He imagines Sarah's first sighting of the mountain:"Then she saw it.It climbed the sky. Up and up.Swelling green and gorgeous." (30). The effect of this compounding of aerial imagery is that of exhilaration, freedom-curiously, the very effect we often expect from a conclusion rather than a beginning.

The freedom provided by the soaring pole is temporary, at best, and largely illusory.While swaying on the pole, M. C. "began to feel sick.Going to lose my balance up here" (29).he can pedal furiously, but when he stops he is still fixed upon the pole. The pole's symbolism is augmented when M. C. learns with surprise that it is not, as he had believed, exclusively his pole, a gift from his father, Jones, for swimming the Ohio River.It is, in fact, a grave marker for 'Everyone of Sarah's that ever lived here.... The pole is the marker for all the dead" (96). Suddenly, the pole is transformed in M. C.'s eyes and in ours.It no longer symbolizes his escape from the world beneath, his temporary freedom, but rather ft becomes a mark of his heritage and an anchor. Our attention is drawn away from that curious, and impractical, bicycle seat at the pole's top, and toward the sanctified ground below, where in a literal sense M. C.'s ancestral roots lie.Virginia Hamilton once said of her native Ohio, "[It] is surreal to me now. The past is fixed into symbol; my home is the warmth of clan and race.This fine valley soil is both freedom and internment" (Commire 99).True freedom is not found in escaping from one's heritage, but in embracing it.

But this embrace is complicated fo M. C. because his ancestral home is threatened with destruction from a creeping stripmining spoil.He acquires a sense of direction with the aid of the two strangers. Through the "dude,' M. C. comes to examine his cultural identity.Lewis refuse* to fulfill M. C.'s dream of making his mother a recording star, which would have allowed the Higgins family to escape their threatened home. Instead, Lewis, it turns out, is a preserver-not a promoter-of the rural life enjoyed by the Higginses. He realizes that to make Banina Higgins a performing star would also be to destroy her ingenuousness, and undoubtedly her soul.Lewis reveres, as does Jones, the family's mountain heritage, and he is compelled to record Banina Higgins' failed voice because "I must, like my father before me" (213).Lewis is driven by the example of his forebears, by his roots, although he does not comprehend Jones' wish to remain on a mountain threatened by imminent collapse:'Stubbomns. Ignorance. ...Like seeds sprouting from generation to generation," he laments (213).But we all must understand our heritage in our own way, and Lewis, the outsider, brings the necessary objectivity to M. C. with which he can appreciate the special qualities of his own heritage.

It is through another outsider, Lurhetta (significantly surnamed "Outlaw"-an example of Hamilton's unabashed, symbolic use of names), that M. C. begins to understand the importance of community. With Lurhetta. M. C. visits the Kil !bums, even though Jones has forbidden him to go there. The Killbums are redheaded with six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot (striking symbols of the clans' oneness of being, not retribution for the sin of inbreeding). They are a wondrous clan and the entire description of Kill's Mound moves into the surreal. At Kill's Mound, M. C. and Lurhetta see a "snake rolling away from them down a runner bean row....It had taken its tail in its mouth and run off like a hoop.Grinning, Ben [Kil !bum] sidled up to it, careful not to step on any runners. He stuck his arms through the circle the snake made and lifted it, a dark wheel, still turning" (184). Detailed with utmost seriousness and realism, this is, nevertheless, sheer fantasy. The Killbum place is teeming with life, albeit bizarre. The property is virtually choked with living things-fruits, vegetables, snakes and children.It is a vital, happy place.Perhaps the rn it marvelous discovery the visitors make is the great net-a kind of giant trampoline in which the multitudinous Ki Ilburn children can safely play. As an image, the net stands itdistinct j 72 contrast to M. C.'s pole:the pole supports a lone individual high above the earth, while the net embraces a community of children close to the earth's bosom. Rather than restraining the children, the net permits them greater freedom of movement along with comforts and security.It is the value of community, of interpersonal relationships, and of the warmth and strength of communal bonds that M. C. finds on Kill's Mound.Isolation, for which M. C. exhibited a decided preference at the novel's outset, is clearly to be understood as a shortcoming, as Is his aimlessness, symbolized by his futile pedaling, his expending energy and getting nowhere.It is the aimless energy of early adolescence which must, with maturity, be harnessed and directed in productive ways ifone is to be a survivo; in the adult world.

It is Lurhetta who spurs M. C. to action. She is a person of bold action, as her underwater swimming feat clearly and almost fatallydemonstrates. M. C.'s efforts to impress Lurhetta goas they do so often in adolescence unrewarded.Lurhetta departs without a goodbye, but not without leaving a parting mementoher knife. M. C. finds that knife and it becomes for him a symbol of action. With the desire to preserve his family heritage (instilled by his parents and reinforced by Lewis) and the will and means to action given him by Lurhetta, M. C. can now take positive steps against the impending disaster threatening his home. He begins building a wall of earth and stc;ieas a barrier against the sliding spoil. The closing chapter abounds in language suggesting the earth and sad ground. "His pants were muddy to the knee" (224)."He dragged his feet" (225)."He searched the ground" (225). He gouged a hole in the side of [a hill], but he had no anger strong enough for murdering hills.He could feel their rhythm like the pulse beat of his own blood rushing" (228).It is this anger which he finally channels into positive action, and the book, which is so full of relative inactivity, ends with considerable zeal.By the novel's conclusion, an entirely new imagistic pattem has emergeda pattern both opposite of and complementary to the opening chapter's soaring aerial imagery. The earth imagery was introduced early in the bookM. C.'s bedroom is acave dug into the side of Sarah's Mountain and is at once womb and tomb, nurturing him in his ancestral land and isolating him from the world. M. C.'s connection to his ancestry is seen in yet another symbol:his great- grandmother Sarah's name was originally McHigan, a name bearing a striking resemblance to 'M. C. Higgins," and we have the same sense of coming full circle on Sarah's Mountain. Jones once muses about the mountain, "It's a feeling....Like, to think a solid piece of somethir.,14 belongs to you. To your father, and his, too.... And you to it, for a long kind of time" (72).

When M. C. finally gets that feeling, he discovers that strength comes not from madly pedaling and swaying a forty-foot pole and pursuing vaporous dreams,but in descending from the pole and soiling his hands with reality. Through the acknowledgement of his family heritage and his acceptance of the communal spirit, he can find in himself the determined will to action. The symbols of the conclu:,ion are striking. The communal spirit is strengthened when M. C.'s brothers and sister join in building the wall. When Ben Kil !bum, once regarded as an outcast by M. C.'s family, is welcomed in the effort, a new communal bond is cemented.Finally, when Jones brings the tombstone of the matriarch Sarah to reinforce. the wall, M. C.'s enterprise is sanctified by the spirit Lf his family heritage. Taking this spiritual and cultural strength derived from his heritagewhich Is the pastand the moral and physical strength found in the sense of communitywhich is the presentM. C. Higgins can forge a positive an deliberate action shaping his future. Now his claim to the title,the Great," is justified.

Contrary to Rees' opinion that "it is not a he py ending" and that the wall represents a futile attempt to stave off childhood (175), the conclusion contains mu that is positive and hopeful.It matters not that the wall is in fact, an inadequate defense against a crumbling runtain.Hamilton does not intend that we interpret the actions of the final chapter on a more realistic plane than we had viewed, fo. example, the forty-foot pole, the Killbums' wonderful net or their six fingers and toes, or the snake hoop. To read this work as pure realistic fiction is to miss the more enduring truth for which Hamilton is striving. M. C.'s valiant efforts are a fitting prelude to the main preoccupation of adulthood, and building the wall represents his movement away from childhood and not an attempt to stave it off. What matters is the affirmation demonstrated by the deliberate action taken in the face of adversity. And if the hero can only say, with T. S. Eliot's persona, "These fragments I have shored against my ruins," perhaps that is no small accomplishmentmany do far less.Hamilton's riost salient message speaks to humanity's resilience and instinct for survival, and through symbolism her characters transcend their mundane surroundings and achieve something like mythic proportions. M. C. Higgins Is a distinctly Afro-American hero who must come to terms with his own cultural identity in order that he may embark on his struggle for survival.In M. C.'s waking to the

73 knowledge of himself, he speaks to all humanity, and his struggle for survival Is part of the same great labor acted out daily by each one of us.

Ferris State College

Works Cited

Commire, Anne. Vol. 4 of Something About the Author.Detroit: Gale, 1973.

Hale, Janice E.Black Children:Their Roots, Culture, and Learning Styles.Provo, UT: Brigham Young U P, 1982.

Hamilton, Virginia.M. C. Higgins, the Great.1974. New York: Deli, 1983.

Heins, Paul."Virginia Hamiltrri.-Horn Bcok August 1975: 344-48.

Rees, David.Painted Desert, Green Shade: Essays on Contemporary Writers of Fiction for Children and Young Adults.Boston: Horn Book, 1984.

74 Arabic Detective Fiction for Adolescents by Sylvia Patterson Iskander

Detective fiction, especially in series, is a favorite among young readers in the Arab world. The Middle East has several series comparable to the Stratemeyer Syndicate books in the detective stories of The 'hree Adventurers and The Four Adventurers, written by various authors, and Tha Five Adventurers, perhaps the b2. of the series, written primarily by Mahmoud Salem. A book in each series is nurrently being published monthly Cairo in modem standard Arabic, rather than the Egyptian dialect, perhaps in order to expand the audience beyond Egypt. These formula storks of approximately 15,000 words, usually concluding with a puff for the next book in the series, are all set in Egypt.Dennis Porters belief that Western detective fiction is a "valuable barometer of [a] society's ideological norms" (1) is also accurate for Eastern fiction.

The latter series have all the hallmarks of detective fiction for the young: improbably young heroes and heroines solving crimes which adults have not been able to unravel; past villainy limited to smuggling, theft, or perhaps kidnapping, but usually not murder or terrorism; the dilution of current danger (Fisher 280, 278, 283); the affirmation of moral order; the belief in deductive reasoning; and the creation of a culturally acceptable hero.

The sequence of events that define a detective story includes the crime, its discovery, the search for clues (some red herrings), the recognition of the criminal, the chase and mplure, and the final explanation. Young readers With prior experience in the genre especially enjoy the cintmst between the "safely familiar" and the "tantalizingly new and different" (Billman 371, arity of the crime, the clever solution to a common crime, the development of suspense, and the pleasurable arousal o7 the reader's emotions (Porter 236). As Anne Scott MacLeod has se...I, "The real protagonist of [formula fiction] is the reader; the real plot is a satisfying vicarious experience that alsoand not incidentallyconveys messages the reader wants and is able to hear" (129).Both Eastern and Western tales affirm their readers' beliefs; indeed, "the persistence of certain recognizable national culL, al traditions within the large corpus of detective fiction" is, according to Porter, "remarkable" (127).I not only agree, but also propose to demon- strate how the cultural differences permeate aspects of the characterization, the action, and the methods for creating suspense.

An Egyptian story differs by its expansive cast of characters from a Nancy Drew mystery.In The Mystery of the International Smuggler and The Mystery of the Dead End Street, two of the more than two hundred books in The Five Adventurers series, the five protagonists iznge in age from seven to.ffiteen.The oldest, Tawfiq, whose nickname Takhtakh appropriately means "tubby," excels in logic and ratiocination; he bears no stigma in the Middle East for being a little overweight.His companions, two sets of brothers and sisters, Mohib and Nousah, Atif and Lozah, do not possess the same intellectual prowess. The girls, Nousah and Lozah, play small roles, not because of their sex, but because of the difficulty of sustaining roles for five detectives. The two, who serve traditional female functions such as preparing food, nevertheless, accompany their brothers, indicating a move toward female equality. Occasionally, they even contribute to a mystery's solution; for example, in The Dead End Street the detectives know that a key was used in a robbery, but the keeper of the keys is innocent of any wrongdoing. Nousah's theory that the key was duplicated some months earlier when the keeper was on vacation and had a substitute proves correct.

The males' behavior is a model of decorum, indicating respect for the girls and each other. The dialogue reveals a lack of competition and jealousy among the youths, unusual by American standards. When an infrequent disagreement occurs, quiet discussion with some deference shown to Takhtakh as the smartest resolves the issue.

This behavior is probably no more unrealistic than some other assumptions behind juvenile detection, such as child sleuths solving crimes that adults cannot solve. Margery Fisher enumerates the child-investigator's natural advantages for detection:'curiosity, an eye for insignificant details, the power to lurk unseen and an awareness of environment as intense as that of a policemen on the beat" (284). One child investigator extraordinaire is Alia, a principal character in The Three Adventurers series.Called "the mother of ideas," Alia bases her theories on careful attention to detail and ratiocination.In The Phony Policeman, her observation of the tight coat and short trousers on a pt."ceman leads the detectives to believe he might be the phony officer they seek.Alia's role equa's, or even surpasses, that of her brothers. She could be an Eastern Nancy Drew, except for the danger factor. Always

6 0 75 accompanied by someone, her brothers, cousin, or cm to four police officers, who respect her ability but feel the need to protect her, Alia is never in jeopardy, the protection of females being integral to Moslem society. When Alia deduces that trailing the gang's messenger will lead to the gang, "Everybody looks at her with appreciation, respect, and admiration.Colonel El-Amari [a high-ranking policeman who doubtless already knows the shadowing technique] says, 'what a sharp giri you are!'". Such high praise for Alia's deductions sounds patronizing to some American readers, but the Egyptian author seems to respect Alia sincerely. Thus female roles are not stereotyped in these stories, but girls are not quite as free as Western females.

The relative balance of action to thought also distinguishes Western from Eastern detective fiction; in the West more exciting events happen to the central characters, and the theoretical solving of the crime receives less emphasis; in the Egyptian series, ratiocination predominates over the few "dangerous' adventures of the protagonists, such as the stranding of the youthful detectives in The International Smuggler when a storm tosses their boat upon a lake shore and the brief capture and imprisonment in a villa of the heroes, but not the heroines, in The Dead End Street.

Because of the intense interest in plot and suspense, characterization usually plays a lesser role in detective fiction.Vet even here differences in development reflect some of the society's values and beliefs, such as the myth of the hero. Tho detective story "celebrates traditional heroic virtues d expresses many of the attitudes associated with an ideology of hero worship" (Porter 126). The detective/hero is the one through whom the reader lives vicariously and whose values the reader tries to emulate. For example, Nancy Drew's roadster, the epitome of American middle-class materialism, represents one such value.In Eastern detective stories this type of materialism is absent, for the criminal may travel by Peugeot or Rithmo (an Italian-made car), but the heroes go by bus, bike, or small car, such as a Volkswagenthe usual modes of travel by the middle class.No doubt Takhtakh and the others are middle to upper class because they live in a villa, employ a maid, and possess a telephone, phones still being fairly uncommon in Egypt except in the major cities. The hero with whom the Eastern child reader identifies is not only middle class, but also modest, well-mannered, usually quiet and thoughtful; the Western math. sees Nancy Drew as middle class, yet charming, curious, headstrong, willing to take chances and face danger. The hero's qualities are culturally determined; in fact, the Eastern hero follows the tradition of the British detective novel of manners more than the American detective novel of adventure which led to the hard-boiled tradition in adult detective fiction.

Different as the heroes are, a belief in deductive reasoning and the establishment of moral order are universal, even though the laws and the notion' criminality may differ from society to society.Crimes such as murder, theft, kidnapping, and smuggling, however, seem to be abhorred by all cultures as anti-social acts. An intemational syndicate excites both Eastern and Western readers; the five detectives solve The International Smuggler through the discovery of a most unusual cartridge, shot from a very large gun. A secret opening, deep in a water well, leads to a series of caves where members of an international smuggling team have hidden stolen pharaonic statues.The gradual discovery and the cold and hunger of the stranded sleuths engage the reader's empathy and anticipation.

Since tales of detection are gold from the point of view of the sleuth(s), whom the readers arc expected to trust as Implicitly as they would a fairy tale's narrator, and since the issues are clearly divided between good and evil, we ordinarily neither meet the criminals nor empathize with them; their motivation, obviously money, is not even mentioned. They are shadowy figures, stock representatives of evil, Egyptians whose leader is, however, an American, John Kent, an inversion of Western fiction, which often employs dark and swarthy villains, perhaps Middle Eastern in origin.

The Dead End Street requires a more sophisticated reader to perceive that a friend of the detectives participated as a gang member in a daring payroll robbery.Mr. Karam, who offers to keep watch for the criminals since they disappeared somewhere in his neighborhood, perhaps in the villa across the street, fools most of the youthful detectives and readers alike, but Takhtakh keeps his own watch and traps Mr. Karam, whose in-depth portrait opposes the generic tradition of relative anonymity for the criminal and thus challenges the reader.

76 Developing suspense challenges the authors, the different techniques used being a principal contrast between the stories under examination.Traditional methods for developing suspense, such as delaying the action through descriptive passages, dialogue, authorial intrusion, or the inclusion of details about everyday life, are employed by both groups of authors.Both create suspense through the giving and the withholding of information. The Arabic store, however, probably includes fewer red herrings, more repetition than American readers like, and more characters whose portraits are almost Flemish in detail.Because the characters are seldom alone, perhaps indicative of the large families and the crowded conditions in many Egyptian cities, the author must identify the speeches by speaker and perhaps by listener. The plurality of characters, each required to speak on occasion, produces frequent interruptions and tedious re4^ration.

Another type of delay for suspense occurs in chapter 1 of The Dead End Street when Takhtakh meets Inspector Sami:

T:"Something must have happened in Ma'ady [a Cairo suburb).- IS:"I have newsfifty thousand Egyptian pounds worth!' T:"Don't you want to have a cup of coffee before we talk?" IS:"Indeed, I left my house without having anything.'

Takhtakh leaves and asks the maid to make a cup of coffee. Tnen he phones his friends... and asks them to come to his house after telling them about Inspector Sami's presence.

When the maid serves the coffee, the four friends come and greet the inspector warmly.It has been quite a while since they last saw him.After his first sip of coffee, the inspector commences talking.

This meeting with Inspector Sami is typical of many gatherings that enable the youthful detectives to discover crimes, pool information, formulate moves, and deduce solutions.The suspense is generated from the delay caused by this polite inquiry about the coffee, the request to the maid, the phone call, and the serving of coffeeall before any further explanation of the fifty thousand pounds. The Arab reader's patience contrasting with the American child's demand for action is indicative of the slower pace of life in Middle-Eastern society as compared with that of America.

The quoted passage also rev ea.s the importance in Middle-Eastern culture of welcoming and serving guests prior to condu,ffing b, ss, and it emphasizes the importance of attention to elders and their positions, for throughout the series each officer is accurately and repeatedly addressed by his appropriate title.

In conclusion, tricza Egyptian detective stories reflect their society's attitudes about family, females, authority, materialism, hospitality, and manners.Verisimilitude is obvious in the slower paced stories, generated by many methods of delay.Youthful Amencan readers would probably find the plethora of characters, the emphasis on polite behavior, the repetitious dialogue, and the lack of fast-paced action enot":, to reject these books, but to readers interested in hermeneutics, logic, subtleties of detection and ratiocination, and Eastern culture, they are most provocative.

University of Southwestern Louisiana

Works Cited

Billman, Carol."The Child Reader as Sleuth."Children's Literature in Education 15.1 (1984). 30-41.

DiYanni, Robert.The Expectations of Genre. A Review of The Purst it of Crime by Dennis Porter."Children's Literature Quarterly 8.3 (1983):32.33.

Fisher, Margery. The SleutnThen and Now." The Quarter 'oumal of the Library of Congress 38.4 (1981). 277-84.

77 MacLeod, Anne Scott.'Secrets in the Trash Bin: On the Perennial Popularity of Juvenile Series Books."Children's Literature in Education 15.3 (1984): 127-40.

Porter, Dennis. The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction. New Haven: Yale UP, 1981.

Salem, Mahmoud. The Five Adventu.: in thf Mystery of the International Smug_gler. Adventure No. 22 in The Five Adventurers, Series.Cairo:Dar EI- Ma'aref, 1965.

. The Five Adventurers in the Mystery of the Dead End Street.Adventure No. 27 in The Five Adventurers Series. Cairo:Dar El-Ma'aref, 1986.

Snyder, Sylvia B.'On the Edge of Your Chair.Choosing Mysteries for Children.' The Bulletin:Newsletter of The Children's Literature Assembsf the National Council of Teachers of English 11.2 (105): 11-14.

Wall, Esamat. The Three Adventurers in the Mystery of the Phony Officer.Adventure No. 161 in The Three Adventurers Series.Cairo: Dar EI- Ma'aref, 1986.

l

78 "Circling the Square: the Role of Native Writers in Creating Native Literature for Children" by James H. 0.ellert

In a brief but insightful essay on the Isperual tensions and dynamics which have characterized Native/non- Native relations in Canada, Jon Stott of the University of Alberta adapts the ancient symbol incorporating the circle and square found in Tibetan, Indit,n, and Chlilese emblems in order to explore the nature of tile conjunction of these two cultural forces of Canada and North America.Stott suggests that squares and circles symbolize the European and Native cultural influences of north America, and adds that in a figurative sense,

the history of North America during recent centuries has been dominated by an attempt to square the circle....All that is symbolized by the checkerboard pattem of prairie landscapes has been dominant; Enptish law, political structures and religious beliefs have been superimposed on the land and the people.All that is symbolized by the circletribal organizational patterns, spiritual ideals, and artistic patternshas been attacked as outmoded, primitive, and foolish.Squares have been imposed on circles, destroying the configurations el the latter or pushing them underground where they could neither be seen nor be effective. (2)

Jon Stott's metaphor is chosen advisedly.Not only do circles represent a fundamental existential concept for Native peoplesa truth reflected in everything from their paintings to their tribal meetingsbut the reference to attemptingto square the circle" is a cogently appropriate correlative for the European h..,:emony over all aspects of Native life and the resultant shifting demographics which have had the ultimate effect of discouraging any real sense of relevance or pride in the Natives' view of their own cultural heritage.Significantly, as Stott notes, one aspect of Native life which has suffered from the imposition of nonNative values on Canadian Native peoples Is the artistic.It Is notable that along with the more publicized areas of Native concerns such as aboriginal rights, self-govemance, land and resource claims, and high mortality and moitidity rates, the Native leaders of Canada and the Canadian government have recognized the need to revive and redevelop Native languages, literature, art, music, and customs. Such attention is warranted, and perhaps most particularly warranted in respect to Canadian children, for the presentation of limited or biased views of the Native experience to children in their formative years is fraught with danger.

This danger is recognized by many who are directly involved in Native art and literature in Canada. For example, the author and illustrator, George Clutesi, stresses that his versions of West Coast Indian tales are more than an exercise in casting a nostalgic eye back to a needy forgotten culture of a once carefree people.Instead, Clutesi sees his art as performing a critical dual role in Canadian society, in which nonIndians might better understand the culture of the true Indian, and Natives might return to their art to counteract the dubious 'civilizing' influences of alien cultures.Clutesi goes so far as to suggest that the attenuation of Native art and literature 'could be part of the reason so many of the Indian population of Canada are in a state of bewilderment today' (12). What I wish to explore here is to what extent Clutesi's concerns have been and are being redressed En respect to works whici might be read and studied by Canadian children, ir, to return to the rjrclesquare metaphor, to ask this question:has there been any circling of the squar3 in works to which Canawn children are exposed?In addressing this question, I especially wish to offer some comments on the role Native writers have platut and are playing in this process.

A survey of the wide spectrum of literature about Natives which Canadian children might encounter reveals three roughly chronological phases of development:that in which Natives are stereotyped as savages (noble and otherwise); that to which nonNatives attempt to depict the Native experience more realistically; and finally, l.p1: in which Native writers relate their perceptions of their own culture and history. The first phase noted, which began as early as the first decade of the eighteenth century in America with the "Deerfield Captivity Narratives" and which ultimately filtered down through numerous well known works read by children in both the United States and Canada, is by and farce characterized by highly generalized, exaggerated, and usually stereotypical depictions of the Native reality. The portrayal of Natives In literature and various derivative media available to children as either nobility incarnate or more often as bloodthirsty heathens bent on sadistic treachery aimed at good Christian folk Is one which mor adult readers would dismiss as blatantly false.However, to what extent childrri would recognize the

E4t... 4 79 falsity of such characterizations is another matter.Moreover, for children who spend innumerable hours in front of the silver screen or the family television watching cavalry troops, resolute pioneers, and redoubtable mountain men overcome the menace of the red ...kinned devil, any reiteration in print of such hyperbole is a matter for concern.

In the second phase of the developrinnt of Native literature to which Canadian children are exposed it can be seen that if not always the results, at least the intentions of these non-Native adaptors are more constructive than those of writers from the first group noted in one critical way. they demonstrate a conscious attempt to re-create Native realities in their work. Although a dedication to this principle by no means assured for adapters, the attempt to offer the essential spirit and flavour of Native le has become the sine Qua non of most literature written about Natives !n Canada today.

While time does not allow me to discuss these non-Native writers in my detail,I would suggest that many of their works, because of a fidelity to European fairy tale models and to a style and expression more consistent with such models, the rightness of tone, language, and characterization amenable to Native stories is seldom present. On the other hand, a book such as Christie Harris's Raven's Cry, which won the Canadian Library Association's book of the Year Award for Children's Literature in 1967, is a clear example of how the myth, legend, and history of Native peoples can be incorporated into a convincing work of historical fiction without sacrificing the realities of the original peoples. What is clear in Harris' work is that she succeeds in freeing herself from the domination of European philosophical, religious, and artistic influences.h, spite of the successes of a writer such as Christie Harris in treating Native sources, as Agnes Grant of Brandon University notes in an article oa five "cultural awareness" books on Native life in Canada written for children by non-Natives,the question 'How would this book have been written by a Native person?' :hould always lurk at the back of the reader's mind" (68).Happily, in recent years, sorrir answers to Agnes Grant's critical questions have been made available.

Many of the challenges and problems with which non-Native adapters of Native stories must deal apply equally to Native writers, of course.Recalcitrant source material, translation complications, the required degree of adaptation and embellishment, the intrusions of philosophies and art forms inconsistent with Native culture, and appropriate t .els of dictionall must be considered by any writer treating indigenous sources.Other questions arise, however, which apply to Native writers in a somewhat more speoialized way. One such query, implied by Agnes Grant in her closing thoughts on the cultural awareness book:, alluded to is whether Native writers have something to offer )_ . readers not available in books written by non-Natives, ;;Ind concomnant concern is posed by Jon Stott: m a Native writer using a European tanguage and a European fict!olial genre limited by these in communicating his materials? (4).In attempting to ansv.er these questions, I shall emphasize the stories and criticisms of three current Native writers:Maria Campbell, Basil Johnson, and George Clutesi.All three can well serve to demonstrate the particular role of the Nativrs writer whose works are read by children.

Maria Campbell, a Metis, was born in 1940 in Northern Saskatchewan. She has written four books, one of which i:.in autobiography entitled Half-breed; her three other books are alien read by children. These three works, People of the buffalo, i'`fle Badger arid the Fire Spirit, and Riel's people are a sensitive explorations of the Native Canadian experience..'eople of the buffalo stresses the idea of the harmonious relationship between Nature and man, a theme obviously important to Campbell since it again appears in Riel's people.In an interview recorded in 1979, Campbell explains why this concept has particular relevance for her:"Even with my own people, we are losing a lot of that.It is Important for all of us.If we don't realize that and we don't do something to conserve or oreserve what .ve have, we are going to lose it all, just destroy it" ("A conversation with Maria Campbell" 19.20. Little Badger is a re-creation of the timeless and universal legend of the attainment of the gift of fire, framed by the story of a young contemporary Indian girl's visit to her grandparents' mission home. Campbell is not nnly relating another legend, however, she is exploring the importance and tenuousness of the Natives' link with the past The experiences of the young girl are realistically presented, although the themes transcend the specific setting of the Canadian prairie.In Riel's people, Campbell's primary emphasis is on the el.eoncertingly real plight of the Metis, who as half-breeds, are tom between the two dominant cultures of t',e Western plains region of Canada.

In each of these three books, whether Campbell is emphasizing the oneness of all life, the Native peoples' links with their traditions and past, or the more specific ramifications of being a Metis half-breed in modern Canada, it is difficult to imagine a non-Native bringing the same degree of insight and feeling to these themes.Campbell is r0

80 still tied to the land of Northern Saskatchewan; in the 1979 interview cited above, she states that she has a 'spiritual feeling" for the land and returns to her birthplace whenever she is realty feeling "weak' (16).In her treatment of the Metis' plight in Riel's people, Campbell reveals that as she wrote and relived some of the incidents in the story, "there were parts .. . where I just wept' (20). To return to Agnes Grant's question on the unique contributions to be made by Native writers, it is unlikely that few non-Native writers, whether consulting records in archives or interviewing tribal elders, could duplicate Campbell's perspective.

In hi:- introduction to his tales of the West Coast Tse-shat people (9-14), George Clutesi explains how his stories can transmit the traditional manners and mores of his people to young readers.Clutesi stresses that the tales in his collection emphasize ideas such as the profound pride of his people, their reliance on physical and eniritual strength, their reverence for Nature, and their concept of a universe shared by all living things.Clutesi also r .1(s on the structure m his stories, and underscores the Indians' belief in the magical powers of numbers (for Coast tribes the number was usually four) and ceremonial procedures and customs.In addition, Clutesi argues that the repetitive situations and phrases common to many tales are linked to the emphasis on moral didacticism inherent in the original oral versions which were intended to be committed to memory.

The tales themselves are simply presented, suggesting that Clutesi is directing these fundamental Native beliefs and concepts at the preadolescent reader in particular. Thus in a typical story, which combines the traditional theme of the human quest for fire with an explanation of "why the inside of the deer's knees are black," the irreprossive appeal of Ah-tush-mit, Son of Deer, who steals fire from the feared wotf people, renders Clutosi's celebraticA of strength, cunning, endurance, and universal altruism, unobtrusive. As illustrated in Maria Campbell's stories for children, what for most non-Nath e w:irers is a two-step process (learning about the traditions and beliefs and them presenting them), for the Native writer is often an instinctive, restorative return to his or her roots. This one-step process applies to Clutesi as well as to Campbell, and the primary consequence is that his stories for children are conveyed with an easy wit and humor, with appropriate detail, and above all, with a sure sense of the original oral versions.

In the preface to his collection of Indian stories, the Ojibway writer and scholar, Basil Johnson, suggests precisely what it is that a Native writer can offer to non-Native and Native readers alike.Like George Clutesi, Johnson begins with a firm understanding of his own heritage, or, as he defines it,the sum total of what people believe about life, being, existence, and relationships" (7).Also like Clutesi, Johnson perceives his stories as beneficial to both Native and non-Native readers.For the former, the tales are none way of perpetuating and enhancing the bequest of our forefathers; for the latter, they are "a means of s.iaring that gift with those whose cu are and heritage may be very differed but who wish to enlarge their understanding" (7).But perhaps most significant of alland it is here that a Native writer's perspective might well be differen' from that of a non- Native Johnson views the stories not merely as anthropological depositories of information and attitudes, but as an inextricable part of the existence of the Native peoples. He writes,but it is not enough to listen or to read or to understand the truths contained in stories; according to the elders the truths must be lived out and become part of the being of a person. The search for truth and wisdom ought to lead to fulfillment of man and woman" (7).It is this element of self-actualization, of developing through the stories (so obviously a part of the orally rendered versions) which is instinctive with writers such as Johnson, Clutesi, and Campbell and so often foreign to most non- Native writers.For example, Johnson's vision of the human cycle of life and death, as presented in his tale The Path Without End, is unmistakably clear and convincing because the vision and the tale spring from the same impulse for him. This story on the acceptance of destiny and death as symbolized through the anguished search of a young brave for his dead lover has an immediacy and resonance because for the writer, till story is more than an adventure involving supernatural beings:it is instead, closer to an accepted article of faith.

To retum to the two questions asked at the beginning of this brief review of these represents; 'e Native writers:the sensitivity, insight, and artistic skill of the writers such as the three discussed here would support the contention that Native artists have perspee.,ves on issues and concepts affecting Native peoples which make their writings invaluable to young Canadian readers. As to the matter of the liabilities of Native writers having to use an alien language and adopted fictional genres to communicate their materials, it should be recognized that any rendering in English of a Native language, oral story is at best a cor-promise.But like Plato's philosopher, the

81 Native interpreter is decidedly closer to the 'ideal' than are most who approach the stories from another culture, another perspective, and often with another motive.

Lakehead University

Works Cited

Campbell, Maria.Little Badger and the Fire Spirit.Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1977.

. People of the buffalo. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1976.

Riel's people. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1978.

Clutesi, George. Son or Raven Son of Dear.1967. Sidney, B. C.:Gray's Publishing Ltd., 1975.

Grant, Agnes."Bridging the Guttural Gap.'Canadian, Children's Literature 31-32 (1983):63.68.

Johnson, Basil.Oiibway Heritage.Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1976.

Stott, Jon C.The Circle and the Square.'Canadian Children's Literature 31-32 ,1983): 2-4.

. 'A Conversation with Maria Campbell."Canadian Children's Literature 31-32 (1983): 15-22.

82 Julie of the Wolves and Doasonq: The Cultural Conflict Between the Inuits and the Dominant American Culture by Vary Lickteig

In 1986, Gary Paulson received the Newbery Honor Award for Doi:Isom:L.Thirteen years earlier, Jean Craighead George received the Newbery Award for Julie of the Wolves. These two books are of particular interest to the topic of cross-culturalism in children's literature.Both books deal with clashes between two cultures of North American people: the Inuit culture of the North and the dominant culture of the Western Hemisphere. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this culture! clash and to observe the importance of Inuit songs and Inuit ways as we note the contrast with Western culture.

Julie of the Wolves is a story set in Alaska.Julie, a young Inuit girl, is running away from an arranged marriage. Her goal is to go to San Francisco to stay with her pen-pal. When she becomes lost on the tundra, she befriends wolves in order to survive. She eventually finds her father, who she thought was dead, and must race the truth that he is not the way she remembered him. This requires that she make a decision about the placeboth geographic and culturalwhere she belongs.

Russel in Doasonq also lives in the Inuit culture. As he approaches manhood, he becomes aware of a restlessness in himself.In addition, he is concerned about the fact that the Inuit culture is being debased by influences from the Western culture, calledthe Outside" by Russel.Realizing his son's restlessness, Russel's father sends him to see Oogruk, the shaman, to seek help.Russel asks Oogruk how to get the song back, those Inuit songs that are the symbol of the truth. As Russel's father says, 'Sometimes words liebut the song is always true' (Paulson 11).Oogruk suggests they must live the right way to get the songs back.Russel's response, "I will,' comes from him without knowing he is speaking, but he realizes his destiny is to become a song. Thus, his quest is one to rediscover the old ways and become a song.Leaving with Oogruk and Oogruk's dogs, he completes a journey across the tundra and finds his song.

The major similarity of these plots is the fact that a central character, living in two cultures, confronts the changes in his native ways as these are influenced by a culture from the outside. As an aside, ff is worthwhile to note that cultural conflict is the theme of other books of children's literature. Moon Shadow in Dracronwinqs by Lawrence Yep, for example, must face the conflict between his Chinese backgrcoind and the American culture in San Francisco in the early 1900's.Similarly Shirley Temple Wong of Ii the Year of the Boar end Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Loid, realizes the differences between Chinese ways and the values of the dominant Western culture of Brooklyn, New York, in the 1(140's.Likewise, Cassie Logan, a Black American in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cr' by Mildred Taylor faces the prejudice of a white society in rural Mississippi during the Depression.In tnese three stories, as in Julie of the Wolves and Dogsong, your,g people of one culture feel the effects of living with the Western culture.But Moon Shadow, Shirley Temple Wong, and Cassie Logan are all different from Julie and Russel in that they have moved or have been moved into the Western culture while Julie and Russel have stayeu in their own land, and the Western culture has come to them. This is a significant difference, I believe, because the very environment of Julie and Russel seems to cry out for the maintenance of old ways and to resist the changes being imposed on it.The tension between two cultures is, therefore, even more dramatic than in the other stories.

In minion to the cultural conflict that is faced in both Julie and Doasonq, there are other similarities.Both are third person stories, both have one central character, young Inuits (one male, one female).Both stories are linear, they begin at one place and arrive at a different place, not returning to the place where they started.Other aspects of the journeys are similar:the hunger, the weariness, the dangers, and the importance of hunting with some successes, even though against great odds. The goals of the jodmeys are different.At the outset, Russel has no particular goal, but he feels he must go.At the end of the story, we know that Russel has reached his goal, not necessarily a goal of place, but the goal of his destiny:that is, the destiny to become a song. At the beginning, Julie has a goalthe goa' being to live in San Franciscobut when the story ends, we do not know what her goal is.

83 6 On their journeys, these characters change, as these are journeys from innocence to experience. Both characters are caught between childhood and adulthood, between Inuit culture and the Western culture. The journeys provide some contrasts. Russel is going north, Julie is going south; Russel is running away from the Western world, Julie Is running to it; Russel's journey takes place in winter, Julie's in summer.Interestingly, the perils of winter (cold and storms) for Russel are no greater problem than the perils of summer for Julie.As Julie says, am lost and the sun will not set for a month. There is no North Star to guide me (George 10). So Julie is waiting even though she knows where she wants to go, while Russel is running, sometimes in what seems :ike a fury, even though he has no particular place/destination in mind.

During these journeys, they learn about themselves and about the worldthe joumey from innocence to experience is, of course, a lesson in living, a study of the human condition. And their particular world views are affected by dual cultural influences. The contrasts are displayed to the reader in different ways.Let us first look at Julie.

Jul:, 'a somewhat ambivalent about these two cultures; for example, on page 8 we read, "She spoke half in Eskimo, half in English, as d the instincts of her father and the science of the qussaks, the white-faced, might evoke some magical combina- tion...." She clearly un-,erstands the differences in gussak ways and Eskimo ways, and throughout the book, the reader is exposed to both.Julie says, for example, "Wolves do not eat people. That's gussak talk" (George 8).

For Julie, the Western culture seemed ail right in the summer, but in the winter the Inuit ways were crucial. After ail, as we find out in a flashback, she had asserted her Inuit ancestry when her parents had called her Julie (her summer name), and "she had stomped her foot and told them her name was Miyax.I am Eskimo, not a gussak!" (George 81)

The cultural clash is shown to the reader in other ways and frequently without comment. We see the trappings of DEWS (the Distant Early Warning System) set up by the government and hear the scientists who have come to the Arctic, proclaiming to the Inuits: We now know lot about living in the cold' (George 91).This must have seemed a curious comment to the Inuits who had survives' the cold for centuries. And we are shown the effects of the invasion of the West, "boats, oil drums, tires, buckets, broken ca;s, and rags and bags, ..." (George 92), as well as the influence of alcohol.

The influence of the West most devastates Julie when she realizes that the gussak hunters, shooting from airplanes, are killingnot for the food and the need of the animal, not even for the bounty, but simply killing tor killing. At that point, site must reject e 7 West and her journey to San Francisco, The pink room is red with your blood.. .I cannot go there" (George 1.,3).

Julie comes to see the value of the Inuit ways: The old Eskimos were scientists too.By using the plants, animals and temperature, they had changed the harsh Arctic into a home, a feat as incredible as sending to the moon ... (George 121).

Let us now turn to the presentation of the Western world as it is shown in Doasonq. Here the narrator's presentation i, more direct. We are presented, likewise, with Russel's reaction. As early as the second paragraph of the book, this fact is presented: the government house v.here Russel and his father live is referred to as small s.deen by twentywhere the familiar sounds "grated like the ends of a broken bone" (Paulson 3).The nine pages of Chapter One present nine negative images of the transplanted Western culture in this Inuit village.This concentration of negative images is accompanied by Russel's thoughts about them. For example:his father smoked ciga-rettes product of the Outsideand the resulting cosigh... "tore at Russ& ... and it meant something that did not belong on the coast of the sea in a small Eskimo village. The coughing came from the Outside, can,from the tobacco which same from the Outside and Russel hated it(Paulson 4).

On the same page (the 6th paragraph of the story), Russel refiects on the snowmobiles, "To fourteenyear- old Russel the whine of them above the wind hurt as much es the sound of coughing. He was coming to hate them, too" (Paulson 4).

84 t." The reader does not begin this story with any suggestion there is strength to be found in Outside.In Julie the understanding of the contrasts comes out of the story while in Doqsonq the contrasts come from the narrator's description. These different presentations can probably be explained by considering the focus and climax of the stories. And the focus and climax of both books concern the cultural conflict and the importance of Inuit song.

We must now turn our attention to the place of Inuit songs in both stories.Russel's story is a search for a song, and the song is the climax of the story. To find the song, he must return Zo the "old ways" explained by Oogruk. The conflict of the cultures, the rejection of influences from the Outside, and the acceptance of Inuit ways permeate the story until we end with the song.

In Julie, the climax comes when Julie realizes the conflict of the cultures.r s reverences to cultural conflict permeate Doqsonq, song itself permeates Julie.And, as cultural conflict is the climax in Julie, song is the climax in Doqsonq.In Julie of the Wolves there are at least twenty-one references to rhythm, song, dance as Julie's natural response to the rhythm of her work, her circumstances, and the landscape.

Both stories end in songs.In the final passage of Julie of the Wolves, Julie sings a sad song of the passing of the seals and whales; eie had come to terms with the fact that the hour of the wolf and the Eskimo is over(George 170). As seen throughout the book, Julie makes literal use of song. Russel's song is the song that Russel has earned through the completion of the hero quest.It is more a symbolic song than the songs of Julie. The song he sings is a personal song and symbolizes a retum to the Truth of the Old Ways.It :s likewise the story of his journey, the story of his initiation, the song of his discovery, and of his becoming the song.

While the enoalgs (both songs) are similar, the story climaxes are very different.In Doqsonq, the climax is the song.In Julie, the climax comes several pages earlier when Amaroq, the mighty wolf, is killed.This climax Is accompanied not by a song, but a dramatic scream of disbelief:"... I don't understand, I don't understand. Ta vun qa vun qa, she cried, Pisupa qasu punqa. She spoke of her sadness in Eskimo, for she could not recall any English' (George 142). While the song is the final climax in Donsonq, the conflict between the cultures is the final climax in Julie. She becomes convinced.Russel left on his journey convinced of the conflict; Julie arrives, in a tragic sense, where Russet had starter.The reader shares the sorrow that the hour of the wolf and the Eskimo is over."Our journey through Julie and Doqsonq is at an end; it is an ending without a clear resolution.

Both Julie's and Russel's stories end in questions. The reader does not know, anymore than Julie does, where she belongs.While Russel I-4s arrived at a destination and completed an initiation, the reader still must wonder how Russel will adjust is life in this northern village. And so, our journey ends with questions as well, for it is impossible to suggest solutions to a conflict in progress.

In keeping with the spirit of these books/joumys, let ma end this paper by raising some questions.Since both of these books present stories with equivocal endings, this seems appropriate.I realize that raising these questions might suggest that I have answers to them.Let me assure you that this is not the case.

Question Nur One. Both of these siones present cultural conflicts between Inuit and Western culture written by non-Inuit autnors. Would this culture clash be presented in the same way by an Inuit writer?

In considering this question I am reminded of Eyes of Darkness by Jamake Highwater, who wro,a book about a main character faced with a clash of world views.His main character, Yesa, is a Native American of the North Plains of the United States.Yest confronts great turmoil in his life becauae of iicreasing European settlement. When otters suggest the situation is hopeless, he responds,

"... there is something we can do.... We can learn so much that we can outsmart them! We can becon.e so wise in their own knowledge that we can rise above them. We can teach oar people everything we learn, until we are no longer strangers in our own land. We can do all of this so we can learn to survive! And then how proud we will be to have kept our grandmothers alive within uslThat is what we can do!(Highwater 161)

8 85 Question Number Two. Both stories present young people who 'seen determined to hang onto old ways ...hen presented with new ones. These young people are more determined than the older generations of their families.Are the young more likely to resist change than their parents are?

And one more question might be considered. Does the introduction of Western ways necessarily diminish Inuit ways? While visiting the Northwest Territories pavilion at the EXPO 86 in Vancouver, I was struck by a quote from an Inuit that appeared there:'... it is often said that we are no longer Inuit because we drive skiddos and use outboard motors.. ..However, you must ask yourself if a farmer is lass of a farmer because he uses a tractor instead of a horse" (Abjumarmjal 1979).

Yes, we must ask ourselves these, and many other unanswerfole questions as well. And we must thank Gary Paulson and Jean Craighead George for presenting works of literatt,:e that tell stones that prompt questions for us to consider, for unanswered questions demand more thought than answered ones;

University of Nebraska at Omaha

Works Cited

George, Jean Craighead.Julie of the WolvesNew York: Harper, 1972.

Highwater, Jamake. Eves of Darkness. New York: Lothrop, 1985.

Lord, Bette Bao.In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. New York: Harper, 1984.

Paulson, Gary. Donsong. New York: Bradbury, 1985.

Taylor, Mildred.Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. New York: Dial, 1976.

Yep, Lauren:Dranonwinns. New York: Harper, 1975.

83 Florence Crannell Means: Cultural Barriers and Bridges by Celia Anderson

When children's author Florence Crannell Means died in 1980, she had written more than forty books in which she had championed the cause of cross-culturalism in the United States.Problems concerning ethnic, religious, or class prejudices are central to virtually all of her work. From 1919 when her first book, Rafael and Consuelo, was published, she wrote straightforwardly throughout her long career about Mexican-Americans, blacks, migrant workers, American Indians, and other groups not readily accepted by mainstream society.Long before the issue-oriented books of the 1960's, Means had pioneered this territory.

Her heroes and heroines from various backgrounds all have a pioneer courage to seek out a better life. However, her characters' ability to win acceptance against great odds has elicited the criticism that some of Means' happy endings are "too pat" (reviews in the New York Times and Library Journal). She has also been accused of wilting some books that are 'too unhappy to sustain the interest of the young" (rev. The Saturday Review 13 Nov. 1954: 94). The truth lies somewhere between. Perhaps her most challenging and ultimately her best works are those that emphasize the difficulties more than he successes of minority groups. The subject that Means dealt with most powerfully, and in a manner that is certain,/ not 'too pat,* is the dilemma of the American Indian in the United States. One of her last books, Our Cup is Broken (1969), contains an analysis of the tragic problems that are bred when a mixture of cultures has come about through conquest and patronage rather than through a free exchange among peoples.

"cor years I have spent as much time as possible among the Hopi and Navajo Indians," Means has said, d great many other tribes besides.I have gained a Hopi name, Tawahonsi, and a Hopi granddaughter" (Kuznets and Haycroft 216).Her Indian stories, which include Tangled Waters (1936), Whispering Girl (1941), Shadow Over Wide Ruin (1942), Peter of the Mesa (1944) The Rains Will Come (1954), and Sunlight on the Mesa (1960), in addition to Our Cup is Broken, are the most sombre series among her works, perhaps because of this dose knowledge.

The proverb of the Z`Igger Indians from which she has taken her title is printed at the opening of Our Cup is Broken and forewarns the reader that this will be a realistic rather than an idealized version of Indian life:

In the beginning God gave to every people a cup of clay, and from this cup they drank their life.They all dipped in the water, but their cups were different. Our cup is broken now.It has passed a -ty.

The story of the heroine of Our Cup is Broken, Sarah Tuvenga (Indian name, Nawamana) bears out this proverb. A shy, undersized 'jut cherished only child of Hopi parents who die when she is twelve, Sarah is taken to Kansas by a principal and his wife, and raised and educated there. When she is twenty, a Romeo and Juliet romance withthe prized son of the town's richest banker (Cup 44) is determinedly blocked by ..-oth Sarah's guardians and the young man's rich parents.

As a result a heart-wounded Sarah secretly leaves her college and returns to her native village at First Mesa. She is famished for the tribal ways and the golden light of the mesas, starved for the happy peace she knew at her mother's house. She finds these, and a job with the field nurse, but also finds more poverty, dissension and discomfort that she remembered.

And then "One bright Sunday afternoon when she felt her life empty like a dried gourd" Cu( 106), she goes up alone to her mother's house, seeking peace in the beauty of its newly restored stateand is raped. A pregnancy results from this single instance, but the young Hopi mar, as a member of her triba; clan, cannot many

C,

87 her. The tabus of white society had earlier prevented her marriage to the wealthy young man in Kansas and left her feeling dishonored; now the Hopi tabus subject her to the public dishonor of bearing a child out of wedlock.

Sorrow mounts for Sarah when her baby daughter loses her eyesight through the lack of the simple remedy of silver nitrate.Continuing to live at her mother's house with only her daughter Missy, after a year of hard work, illness, and desperate loneliness, Sarah succumbs to the wishes of family and friends and marries Bennie, a presentable young Hopi man.It is not a love match on her part, but Sarah yearns for Hopi ways and acceptance by her tribe. She is, however, not skillful at native tasks that are second nature to the other Hopi women on the Mesa. And the Hopi customs work to Sarah's harm. Because new brides are overworked for the first month of a marriage, crouching and grinding the corn for the pjLa, her second pregnancy leads to a stillborn son, and a further cooling in the marriage.

But Sarah stubbornly refuses to leave the village and house where she was born even though Bennie is tempted to join some Hopis who are banding together and taking advantage of a government offer of money to buy land in a more fertile and less eroded area.Only after near tragedy, when, distracted by the derisive remarks of a young tourist who reminds her of her Kansas lovshe forgets her blind daughter Missy long enough for the child to fall unhurt off the edge of a mesa, does Sarah decide that a permanent life here will not change for the better. 'She, Sarah, was living in her mother's house, and it had never looked more serenely beautiful, not even to the homesick dreams of her years in Finch [Kansas].Yet she was like one camping overnight, and if she were to stay here for days or months or years, they would be makeshift days or months or years" (Cup, 227).

The young couple make two decisions:to try to have another child and to leave First Mesa and build a better life.Sarah muses about the tract of land where they will be settling in old military barracks "with nothing beautiful or restful to the eye" Cup 229)."Could the Hopis make it homelike? The satisfying loveliness which they had possessed througr. _entunes had grown slowly, out of a way of life.They would be unskillful in transplanting it, if indeed they could transplant it at all" (229).Means closes the book with this question hanging. The Indian provPt is fulfilled, the adobe house of her mother, crumbling when Sarah returned, then repaired, will crumble again. The clay of the Mesa cannot contain the tribe forever.

Means has woven some major themes into this book she wrote at the culmination of her long career. We have already seen 'he thread of nostalgic longing for a simple, love-filled childhood, symbolized by Sarah's stubborn clinging to her mother's house. We have seen the courtship tabus, which strand Sarah in a nether-world.After her rejection by the white culture, Sarah had "needed to be part of the tribe, as a sheep needed to be part of the flock, and would die if separated from it(Cup, 106).But that oneness is more difficult than she had expected, she feels "no more a part of Hopi land than she had been a part of Kansas" (106).Sarah is a person who, rather than being enriched by exposure to two cultures, is ground between them.

Means most clearly elucidates such confict between cultures when it centers on religious beliefs and rituals. The Hopis have a long tradition of worship and cannot understand why the white missionaries, wnose stofieq and theories the Hopis respect, cannot respect theirs.It is a misunderstanding that goes back centuries in our hemisphere.Benjamin Franklin in his "Remarks on the Savages of North America" (1784), tells the story of a Swedish minister who "Navin assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanah Indians, made a Sermon to them, acquainting them with the pencipal historical Facts on which our Religion is founded; such as the Fall of our first Parents by eating an Apple" (Franklin in Mott and Jorgenson 515-16). The Indians thank him and then relate the story of the coming of agriculture, in which the then starving hunting tribe beholds "a beautiful young Woman descend from the Clouds, and seat herself on that Hill, which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains" (516). When the Susquehanahs share their kill with her, she rewards them:

"Where her right hand had touched the Ground they found Maize; where her left hand had touch'd it, the' found Kidney-Beans, end where her Backside had sat on it, they found Tobacco." The good Missionary, disgusted with this idle Tale, said, "What I delivered to you was sacred Truths; but what you tell me is mere Fable, Fiction, and Falsehood." The Indian, offended, reply'd, "My brother, it seems your Friends have not done you Justice in your education; tl r have not well instructed you in the Rules of Common Civility.You saw that we, who understand

88 and practice those Rules, believ'd all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?"(Franklin, in Mott and Jorgenson, 516)

In Our Cup is Broken, Means echoes this conflict.The Hopis admire Miss Lundquist, the. missionary, and "They were inclined to approve of her God, and many of them would have paid Him tribute if she had not insisted on their ,..az.ting aside 9.11 their old ones as a preliminary" (Gm 19).Sarah instinctively grasps the connection that exists among mythe found round the world.Attending a Christmas celebration at the mission, she notes that "the Indian Christians presented a pageant which related the coming of the Christ Child, somewhat as the (Hopi] ceremonials related the coming of the clans to the mesas' (Cup 28).Later, tom between the two religions and cultures, Sarah admits to herself that she "preferred the Christian God to Masau'u the Bloody-Headed" (CLpi 140). But she is offended by the narrowness, the ethnocentricity of the Christians:

But here again she drew back from the ideas of the Mission Marys, who called Masau'u the Devil and the Hopi Devil-Worshippers. Masau'u might have some malicious qualities, but fundamentally he was merely the god of the Underworld, Sarah knew. And when Miss Lundquist tumed indignantly away from even the sight of a kachina mask, she dealt a wound, since the kachinas were precious to the Hopis.(Cu 140)

This conflict reaches its climax when the Hopi artifacts that Sarah found in a sealed closet in her mother's house are, in spite of their antiquity and beauty, bumed by her Uncle Abraham, who, though converted to Christianity, has tribal right to them.

Sarah, Miss Dayton (the field nurse), an archaeologist from a museum, and the pagan Hopis are all horrified by this action, equally, even if for different reasons.But Means does not allow us any such easy reactions in this book. Throughout the story, the Hopis blame witches for illness and misfortune, when viruses, bad weather, and simple ignorance are the real culpnts. Miss Lundquist inveighs against the superstitions and tabus:"'All the old Hopi waysyou've got to get rid of them all, if you ever'"(Clia 118).Yet the old men feel that "Only if they camed out every requirement with exactitude, could the ntes which had preserved their small people from the bnght mists of antiquity down to the dusty present continue to preserve them" (gm 121).Their rituals predate Christianity; "church and mission and the small Christian settlement" are "dropped like a handful of pebbles at the foot of the mesa" (Cup 76). The sympathetic Miss Dayton asks, "'Why can't they (the Christians] let the poor people alone about their souls? ... Give them sanitation, yes.Give them education, yes.But let them keep their worship"' (2 105).Hearing this, "Sarah fumbled with the question whether they could go on making prayer sticks and dressing like kachinas after they were educated" (105).

But the Hopis are not philosophically unsophisticated. When Sarah in her ninth year is initiated into the Kachina Society and le. ms the shattenng secret that the god-like masked figures she had trembled before dunng her childhood, and who were presented as real gods, are familiar villagers, nothing more, she feelsas if the earth ha:, melted under her feet" (gm 32).Seeing her remain "silent and without spirit" her father takes her to John, the Kik- Marigivi, a wise leader in the tnbe.In a beautiful passage the Kik-Monowi reassures her:

This thing of the kachinas, he said, was more than it looked on the outside. Those whom Sarah saw were impersonated by men, true.But while they were go.ig through the ceremonies, the very spirit of the Supematurals was breathed into them so that for a while they were the kachinas. And so the people came close to touching the fringes of the kilts of the gods. And this was good not only fort Hopis but for the whole of the wort',, unwilling though it was to receive from the despised handful.Cu 32)

It was John, the wise man, the Kik-Monowi, who had advised Sarah to go with the school principal and his wife when her parents died, because the couple were good people. He was among the first who spoke 1, her on her retum to First Mesa, saying, "so often we Hopis choose the wrong things to bring back to the mesas.... May you choose well, granddaughter" (Cm 97).

CI9 89 At first Sarah has brought back the wrong thing. No she has not brought cheap furniture, useless gadgets, or discontent with simple ways, but she has brought back a paralyzing negative atthode toward the outside world.If the Mesa were not already a ghetto created by past laws and continuing custom, she would have wished it SD.It Is not until stung by the insulting attitude of the handsome young tourist whom she momentarily mistakes for her lost Kansas love, that she realizes she will never be whole unless she has the courage to deal with the world beyond the mesa. One of the rituals that she trembled before as a child was the Night of the Giants, when masked "giants" came to each household threatening to eat the children as punishment for misdeeds. The parent's part in this ritual was to promise the giant food in place of the child. Now Sarah is the parent, and she and Bennie must buy off the very real giants of poverty and prejudice and Ignorance that threaten the future of their children. That they must leave their Hopi village, and sadly sacrifice part of their long heritage in order to do thIs, is an indictment of the powerful society that barricaded Native Americans into areas too small and impoverished to sustain a race with the courage to survive and grow.

It is bridges, not barriers, that we need. We have only to pick up a newspaper any day and read of North Ireland, South Africa, or Howard Beach to learn that cultures too often work at cross purposes rather than crossing over to each other.Florence Crannell Means knew the problem very well. She said of her own work, "'The books about minority groups have had varied motivations-more than any other the desire to introduce cne group of people to another, who rtherwise might never know them, and so might regard them with the fear whk.rn is bred of lack of knowledge, and which in its turn breeds the hate, the prejudice which I have seen blazing out in destructive force'" (Commire 155).If Means' message is "too unhappy to sustain the interest of the young,' then God help the cause of cross-cuituralism, and God help the fate of the human race.

Eastern Connecticut State University

Works Cited

A. B. M. Review of The Rains Will Comb. Saturday Review 37 (Nov. 13, 1954): 94.

Assorted Sisters.Rev. New York Times. (Nov. 30, 1947): 47.

Commire, Anne, ed.Something about the Author.1: 154-55.Detroit: Gale, 1971.

Franklin, Benjamin."Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America" (1784).In Benlamin Franklin, eds. Frank Luther Mott and Chester E. Jorgenson. New York: American, 1936.

Hugh, Sr. Mary. Review of Borrowed Brother.Library Journal 83 (Oct. 15, 1958): '979.

Kunitz, Stanley J. and Howard Haycroft. The Junior Book of Authors, 2nd ed. New York: Wilson. 1951.

Means Florence Crannell. The Moved-Outers. Boston: Houghton, 1945.

. Our Cup Is Broken. Boston: Houghton, 1969.

90 Censers as Critics: To Kill a Mockingbird as A Case Study by Jill P. May

Censors in the United States have traditionally had problems when evaluating the me:as of realistic fiction. Their inability to deal with another person's interpretation of real life issues has caused them to ban such diverse authors as Judy Blume, Robert Cormier, and Mark Twain.Often their accusations concentrate on language, racial groups, sexual scenes, enti-establishment attitudes which they deem somehow "un-American." These people do not deny an author's ability to tell a story.Instead, they wish to suppress cultural interpretations which they feel are harmful to "the moral fiber of America."

The "critical" career of To Kill a Mockingbird is a late twentieth century case study of how such censorship works in young adult literature. When Harper Lee's novel about a small Southern town and its prejudices was published in 1960 it received favorable criticism in professional journals and the popular press. Thus, though Booklist's reviewer called the book "melodramatic" and noted "traces of sermonizing", Booklist recommended it for library purchase, commending its "rare blend of wit and compassion' (September 1960: 23).The early reviews did not suggest that the book was young adult literature or that it belonged in adolescent collections. And so their discussions never suggested that the book had strong language or unusual violence which was beyond the scope of a young reader.Instead, they praised To Kill a Mockingbird as a worthwhile interpretation of the South's then existing social structures.

In 1961 the b,:ok won the Pulitzer Prize Award, the Alabama Library Association Book Award, and the Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.It seemed that Harper Lee's blend of family history, loc.,. custom, andrestrained sermonizing was important reading.Since the narrator was an adult remembering events thathappened when she was a young girl between the ages of six and nine, To Kill a Mockingbird rapidly moed into junior and senior high school libraries and classrooms.

By the midsixties To Kill a Mockingbird had a solid place in junior and senior high school American literature studies.However, once its use was discovered by Soutnem parents, its solid place in the curriculum met with strong disapproval. Sporadic lawsuits arose.In most early casss, the complaint against To Kill a Mockingbird was voiced by conservatives.Probably they were objecting to the story's candid portrayal of Southern white attitudes.This was not the issue typically raised, however.Instead, censors criticized the book in general terms, objecting to the use of profanity, sex scenes, and immorality.In Hanover County, Virginia, for instance, the School Board declared the book "immoral" and sought to have it removed from county public schools. When the ruckus surfaced with national news coverage, the School Board withdrew its criticism, claiming that the incident "was all a mistake" (Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, March 1966: 16). To these early censors the problem with Harper Lee's book rested in its entire immorality.

If one looks at their claims, the censors seem to be accurately assessing the book.Indeed, every major censor's objectionthat the book contained profanity, that the black/white relationships depicted implied that white bigotry was widespread in the south, that religious hypocrisy was suggested, that a rape case was explicitly detailed, and that there were several violent scenes throughout the storycan be corroborated. The scenes which Harper Lee chose to picture are not ones of carefree childhood. Even the playful activities of the children are not totally innocent.Often Lee shows the children busy trying to deceive or defy adult authority.In the end, however, these early censors were reluctant to deal legally with the real issues which concerned them. To conservative Southerners it seemed smarter to label the book vizi hope it would disappear from the schools than to legally confront the issues raised in Harper Lee's narrative. And so the book stood up against this first onslaught of criticism, without facing a major fight in the U.S. court system.

The second round of criticism surfaced in the late seventies and early eighties. This time the censors came from the Midwest and the East.In Vernon, New York a minister threatened to establish a private Christian school because the public school libraries contained "filthy, trashy sex novels" such as The Red Pony and To Kill a Mockingbird. aewsletter on Intellectual Freedom, May 19f ): 62). And finally, blacks began to censor the book.In

; 91 a widely reported case, three black parents on Indiana's Warren County Human Relations Achlsory Council resigned because school authorities refused to remove the book from Warren junior high school classes. The book, they argued, "represents institutional racism' (Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, May 1980: 62). While calling To Kill a Mockingbird 'trash' may seem ludicrous to many, the accusation of racism Is harder to deny. Even the positive Image of the children Is marred when they make comments that reflect white bigotry. Scout calls blacks "niggers` at one point in the novel, and Jem says that Mennonites have beards because 'their wives like for 'em to tickle 'em with their beards" (147).

But the book Is not a propaganda piece: it Is an historical novel that has relevance fornew readers.It Is an accurate picture of a hermetic little Southern town, isolated and regional In its attitudes.It Is the story of three children growing up In a time when old regional values are challenged, but we are left unchanged. And because the attitudes of the general townspeople remain basically static throughout the book, Harper Lee's novel is unsettling. The story is effective because Harper Lee's U.S. landscape has been past reality, and because readerssense that old Southern attitudes remain.

An author of realistic fiction, Lee uses time to show that Scout is maturing In a community whose cyclic events have been formed by folkways and popular culture Into an established, unquestionable pattern. The plot unfolds In a circular time cycle, reflecting the town's unchanging social attitudes. The story's events -are framed in the seasons, starting with the deathly heat of summer when Scout is almost six and ending in the decayingseason of fall.There is no sudden birth of idealism among the people. Set in the time of F.D.R., Lee writes:

There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told it had nothing to fear but fear itself (11).

Lee combines the circular structure of time and the regional scene of Isolation to shoes 're reader that her characters are trapped into a scene they cannot or will not change. Three of the book's white adults face this unchanging world, and they seem powerless to stop the flow of events.Atticus Finch, his married sister Alexandra, and Miss Maudie, the Finch children's neighbor and confidant, are models of Southern aristocratic attitudes. They are also relics of a time past, Interpreters of society, and established Southern citizens who pay attention to Southern deportment.

Miss Maudle Is described as "a widow, a chameleon lady who worked in her flower beds In an old straw hat and men's overalls, but after her five o'clock bath she would appear on the porch and reign over the street In magisterial beauty' (43). She is the most outspoken of the three adults, and she Is the one who seems to understand the problems that come with growing up In a dosed Southern society.She seal little events as major changes. When Atticus loses his lawsuit for Tom Robinson, Miss Maudie Invites the chlidretin and explains that Atticus has repres^nt:1 what Is Christian behavior, whether he won or lost, and that he has,4.rted Southerners In Maycomb take a bauy-step toward the future (197-198).Later, she responds to Alexandra's loss of composure by assuring Alexandra that Atticus is trusted and supported by 'people In this town with background', and then she straightens up, retums to the afternoon church circle, and serves 'dewberry tarts' (216).Miss Maudle lives Inside Southern society, quietly holding her tongue and role playing the Southern lady. She might seem eccentric tosome of her neighbors with her funny gardening hats and prim ways, but she never allows anyone except Atticus and the children to see her rebellious personality or hear her disapproval of Southern ideals.Throughout time her behavior remains controlled and sensible.Outwardly she seems accepting of the small town mores Imposed upon her. The story's children, however, know better.In their presence she explains Southern Baptists, saying, 'Foot-washers believe anything that's pleasure is a sin.... Thing Is, footashers think women are a sin by definition. They take the Bible literally, you know' (45). And when the children wonder why their father Is a sharp-shooter who refuses to carry a gun, Miss Maud le explains, if your father's anything, he's civilized In his heart.... People in their right minds never take pride In their talents' (93).

Alexandra is the true believer In the south's decadent moral ways. She spends her time showing the children that nothing changes socially. When Scout decides that ahe will go to her black maid Calpumia's house for

92 or-- a visit, her aunt retorts, You may lot' (127). When Atticus tells the children in front of Calpumla that Braxton Bragg "despises Negroes* Aunt Alexandra waits for the maid to leave the room. Then she says, 'Don't talk like that In front of them . It encourages them. You know how they talk among themselves" (145). And when Scout decides she will be frierds with Walter Cunningham, her aunt won't allow It.111 tell you why,' she explains, 'Becausehe Is trash, that's why you can't play with him' (205). To her the old values are uncompromisingly right. And through her the children can see that time will not change anything as long as the 'wrong elements' are not allowed to be equals with their betters.

The children's perspective of Southern justice Is shaped by their father, the adult of the story who remains trapped by the Southern attitudes toward change and disorder. A lawyer, Atticus Is aware of the society he lives in, and he is bound by Its traditions.Harper Lee tells us that Atticus's younger brother fled Maycomb County, and then goes on to say that Atticus stayed In Maycomb because, he was Maycomb County bom and bred; he knew his people, they knew him, and because of Simon Finch's industry, Atticus was :elated by blood or marriage to nearly every family in the town' (11).Throughout the book Atticus is described as atypical of other men in the town. Scout explains, 'He did not do the things our schoolmates' ;ethers did:he never went hunting, he did not play poker or fish or drink or smoke. He sat In the living room and read" (85).Atticus is an intellectual surrounded by common folk who allow him his idiosyncrasies of teaming and books because he comes from an old-line of aristocracy he is a Finch from Finch's Landing.His ancestors raised cotton and had slaves.Atticus's own attitudes toward blacks are those of a man more comfortable with past values, left unquestioned by law or by protest. He says that he had hoped to get through life without having to take a court case based on black/white mores, and he declares that he expects to lose the case.After the trial, when the black man is found guilty of rape in testimony based upon very circumstantial evidence, Atticus answers his son's plaintive 'How could they do t, how could they?' by saying, 'They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again' (195).Attir,. rs paternalistic white man who will help blacks as well as he can but who believes that in the '3n d Httw . ye done to change southerners. He acknowledges tha utright exploitation of blacks is wrong. And so, when he dscusses Tom Robinson's fate with Jem, Atticus expla_, 'There's nothing more alckens.2 to me than a !owgrade white man who'll take advantage of a Negro's ignorance" (202).

Black attitudes are also trapped by the cultural structure.Atticus's black maid grew up at Finch's Landing and knew Atticus's father.Old Mr. Finch gave Calpumia the Bibb she teamed to read from. And. true to the tradition of the servants of aristocracy, she became one of less than one-half dozen blacks wh..i %.:Pild read In all of Maycomb.In tum, Calpumla relects the aristocratic house slave's attitude towards all blacks' being able o team when she says, "You're not gonna change any of them by talkln' right, they've got to want to learn themselves, and when they don't want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their languaW (118).

It is the predictability of the seasons which bends the everyday routine of thcse psnple with the realization of Southern stagnation and keeps the story's dramatic sense of injustice from disrupting the narrator's mood. The adult dramas of mad dogs, front porch gossip, and courtroom trials take place in the summer. the fall and the winter the children go to school.In the school's paradoxical world, weak-minded teachers misjudge vagrants and declare that Hitler b a dictator, that democracy is better, to a classroom of children who watched a black lose his rights through the town's system of justice duel-1g the summer. The institutionalized system of education Is not a place that fills Scout's memories or that confirms her Ideas.It is an Institution that fosters mistrust and deceit.In the end, school is a place Scout endures. Her life is filled with the summer and Its urama, with her brother's attitudes, arid her father's trial.She watches her brother flail out in anger against the Southern 'justice," and sees her father's inability to affect Southern bigotry. She watches events pass by without changing attitudes or cultural patterns

Lee's slowmoving Southern drama meets Elenor N. Hutchens's standard's for a novel shaped by time. The seurity of small town predictability is tc 3 rigidity of the cultural values. As tension between the two builds, the reader's understanding of the town's logic evolves. The white citizens' standards for their future use from pest institutions.'Their ancestral fears of free blacks persint and are only superficially buried. Their real fear of a future wrought with change finally surfaces through the children,yplc,a! of the old understanding that 'old families are best,' that the south has a peculiar social system based on family position, Jem explains to Scout, "The thing about It Is, our kind of folks don't like the Cunninghams, the Cunninghams don't like the Fursils, and the Ewells hate

93 and despise the colored folks' (207). And finally, Scout says to her father that sometimes it is best to Ignore the wrong doings, explaining that Arthur Rad ley's heroic actions are best covered up. Thus, the reader sees Snout accept Southern logic. Scout knows from experience that telling the real tale of attempted murder and of subsequent justice wouldn't help Boo Rad ley in the end.it would simply bring a trial and new gossip for him, without any change in his existence. A mature nine-year-old, Scout says, It'd be sort of flke shooting a motnrigoird, wouldn't it?' (251). Thus Lee suggests that Southern Justice fails for those who are 'different'

Hutchens calls this development of drama through 'the sense of period, openly exploited in the historical novel' cyclic, and explains that the author is successful because time is carefully woven into the drama until the reader feels a sense of shared experience (Spilka 61). The scene painted need not be one the reader delights in reading about, but it is one that seems real for the contemporary reader.It is this appeal which caused Harper Lee's book to be controversial.In the case of To Kill a Mockingbird the adult readers who sought to ban the book were reacting to those unsettling scenes in the book as if they were present day situations. Their reactions were to problems they tett still persisted.Their anger ignored the significance of Lee's reference to the specific era in To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee's scene is one from the past; it is based upon a child's memories of real events.

When Harper Lee was five years old, the Scottsboro Trial began.In one of the most celebrated trials, nine blacks were accused of raping two white women. The first trial took place in Jackson County, Alabama.All nine were convicted. Monroeville, Lee's home town, 'mew about the case. Harper Lee's father was a lawyer during that time. Her mother's maiden name was Finch. Harper Lee attended law school, a career possibility suggested to Scout by well- meaning adults in the novel.

Scout Finch faces the realities of South= society within the same age span that Harper Lee faced Scottsboro. The timeline is also the same. Although Lee's father was not the Scottsboro lawyer who handled that trial, he was a Southern man cf honor related to the famous gentleman soldier, Robert E. Lee.It is Rely that Harper Lee's father was the author's model for Atticus Finch and that the things Atticus told Scout were the kinds of things Ama Lee Lehi his daughter. The attitudes depicted are probably the ones Harper Lee grew up with, both In terms of family pride and small town prejudices.In this sense, the book must not be evaluated simply as realistic fiction.It must be recognized as historical fiction which brings to kfe a child's reactions to Injustice.

Scout tells of a time past when white people would lynch or convict a man because of the color of his skin. And she suggests through her careful description of a town with a static cyclic pattern that events might remain unchanged throughout time. She implies that the bigotry of the past could cradle new bigotry.Literary critic Theo D'Haen has explained that the life of a literary work continues when It remains'part of the ongoing activities of that world' (4). To Kilt a Mockingbird brings the South's past and the reader's present attitudes into account. As the children in the story mature, they lose their innocence. So must the reader. The reader learns that predictability is not safe, and that change is unavoidable.It ic this new knowledge that frightens the censors. They are unwilling to acknowledge that Lee's scene ever happened. They want to believe that everything In U.S. history has worked out 'happily-ever-after,' and they hope to show children the greatness of the country's past. As adults they do not want children to deal with the realities of history.

Fear of discovery causes 'moral' adults to ban books. These same adults would deny the child's right to Interpret, to discuss, and to evaluate. Censors act because they believe that children cannot determine right from wrong. Or they act because they do not acknowledge that the author's need to share and the reader's right to interpret keep society from becoming a place where

'There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go. ... Nothing to see outside.... Nothing to fear but fear Itself.' (11)

94 Works Cited

Theo D'Haen. Text to Reader: A Communicative Approach to Fowles. &Oh, Cortazar and Boen. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1983.

Elanor N. Hutchens, "An Approach Through Time,' In Towards a poetic of Fiction, Mark Spilka, pd. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1977.

Harper Lee. To IGII a Mockingbird.Philadelphia:Lippincott, 1960.

Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom. Chicago: ALA, 1960-1985.

P5 Safety in the Structures of Art: Beme Miens' Madeline Books by Jackie Eastman

In his many works for both children and adults, Austrian emigrant Ludwig Bemelmans captures a zest for Irving and a vibrant sense of the cosmopolitan.His best known books, the five featuring the adventures of little red- headed Madeline, bring the culture of France and England to the English-speaking children on this side of the Atlantic.In a sophisticated impressionistic art style reminiscent of that of Raoul Dufy, Bemelmans captures famous cityscapes and rural aspects, as well as a multitude of details about the daily lives of Europeans. Images of the Eiffel Tower, Seca Coeur Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, parks and gardens, sidewalk artists, outdoor cafés, vegetable stall3, and doubledecker buses bring a new world to a young child who has never traveled. Bemelmans' genius in these books lies not only, however, in the multiplicity of fascinating foreign details; it lies also in the organization which he brings to this material. By communicating dearly that his books are 'art," he reassures the child reader that she may participate in wild adventures in foreign lands wIthout experiencing any overwhelming sense of danger.Clearly, Bemelmans' impressionistic art style and rhymed poetry contribute importantly to this separation between "real' life and the world of 'story.'Perhaps more subtly, Bemelmans uses a number of visual and verbal structures both to establish this aesthetic distance and to create an underlying sense of order.

The conflicts in the Madeline books range from the ordinary to the fantastic, from the annoying to the dangerous.In the first bock, Madeline. a Caldecott runner-up for 1940, the drama centers around Madeline's appendicitis attack and midnight rush to the hospital.Madeline's Rescue, the 1954 Caldecott winner, moves quickly from the crisis which inspires its titleMadeline's near drowning in the Seine Riverinto arguments concerning Genevieve, the dog who saved Madeline's life.In Madeline and the Bad Hat (1956), a new character, Pepito, breaks a cardinal rule in the canon of childhoodkindness to animalsand suffers disastrous consequences before teaming his lesson.In Madeline and the Gypsies (1959), a friendly gypsy circus kidnaps Madeline and Pepito.In the last book, Madeline in London (1961), not only Madeline bat Miss Cleve, and all the girls leave Paris, flying to London to visit Pepito in his new home. The horse which they present to Pepito bolts and dashes about London with Madeline and Pepito on his back.1

Structures which create aesthetic distance constantly protect Bemelmans' child reader from the fear, anger, sadness, or worry which such adventures might arouse. A scene from his 1937 Newbery Honor Winner Golden Basket suggests the essential perspective of the readers of his Madeline books. Shortly after the story opens, the two main characters, Celeste and Melisande, peer out a window of the Golden Basket Hotel into the city square of Bruges, Belgium, as moming breaks on the first day of their visit.At this point, Bemelmans' text suggests the separation between the viewer and the view which so dearly informs his Madeline books:

inrough this window the little girls were looking for the first time in their lives into an altogether new world, with a new language, new policemen, pastry shops, and lampposts. Even the horses and dogs and clouds seemed different.Only the sparrows and pigeons looked the same as they did anywhere else. The children were cold. They dosed the window. (15)

Bemelmans gives the reader of the Madeline books the security of distance enjoyed by Celeste and M_lisande as they look into an "altogether new world,' by dearly establishing that these works are "art"; they are not life itself, but a separate, well-ordered, familiar structure based on life.First of all, as the child opens a Madeline bock, the end papers provide a literal "window" into the world of 'story' a framed picture capturing its essence. The opening frame invites us in; the final end papers, identical in each case to the first, communicate the sense that Madeline's world continues without us.Psychologically, we may participate in what goes on here while remaining apart; we may choose to look through the window, but, like Celeste and Melisande, we may dose it whenever we want to.

Bemelmans depicts a world of childhood where both time and space are carefully ordered. The famous couplets with which each book begins establish a prescribed space for each of twelve little gift:in an old house in Paris that was covered with vines/ Lived [my emphasis] twelve little girls in two straight lines.In two straight lines

S9 97 they broke their bread/ And brushed their teeth and went to bed' (Madeline 1-5). The identity of Madeline herself derives from this order: the smallest one was Madeline' [my emphasis, 12]. And her height determines her placement: She will always walk at the back of line, next to Miss Cleve!, and sleep at the end of the row. Regularity marks not only the spatial arrangement, but also the activities of these little girls:nct even the weather disrupts their schedule: They left the house at half past nine In two straight fines In rain or shine (9-11).Even when they fly to London, they manage to step off the plane on time: 'Welcome to London, the weather's fine. /And it's exactly half past nine" (Madeline in London 9).

Berr.elmans uses the daily schedule of his characters, which doubtless mirrors to some extent that of his child reader, to establish the starting and Kiding points of his stories."Twelve little girls in two straight lines" emerge for a walk on or near page one; and, with the exception of the first book, Madeline, where Madeline herself Is away in the hospital recovering nicely. all 'twelve little giris in two straight lines' are home in bed by the end. This narrative pademleaving home for adventure, returning home to securitycharacterizes much of the literature or young children; we see it in such stories as Hansel and Crete!, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and Where the Wild Things Are, to name only a few.Berne !mans' use of this narrative structure signals to the child reader that she is comfortably in the familiar world of 'story.'Even though our heroine may fail in the Seine or charge about London on a runaway horse, we know that she will be safely tucked into bed by the end.

In addition to adhering to the traditional narrative pattern of leaving and returning home, Berne !mans establishes his own verbal and visual formulae which likewise signal 'open' and 'close to his reader. These serve not only to enhance the sense of containmentthe separateness from "reality"of each individual book, but also to increase the reader's pleasure as she encounters the familiar ft mulae from one book to the next.In Madeline, Berne !mans devotes the first fifteen pages to creating the elements of setting and character which he compresses in one single page of each of the four subsequent books. As with the end papers, Beme imans' framesbe they of wood, as in the case of Madeline's Rescue, or of autumn leaves, as Madeline and the Bad Hatcreate cesthetic distance.In Madeline and the Gypsies Bemeimans places the story elements up and down the light and left hand sides of the page in a manner reminiscent of a medieval manuscript.Finally, on page one of Madeline in London, each of the twelve little giris holds up a picture of a story element'old house in Paris,'that was covered with vines,' "twelve little giris lr two straight lines,' and so forth, dearly signaling to the reader that site now enters a familiar world of art.

Just as Berne !mans opens each story formulaically, so too does he close each in ways predictable from one book to the next. He establishes the basic pattern in Madeline:They went home and broke their bread,/ Brushed their teeth and went to bed' (36-37).Frequently, Miss Clay& says a final goodnight, tums out the fight, and closes the door.In Madeline, Bemeimans uses the narrator's voice, the visual image, and even the size of the print to remind his reader that this has been after aN only a story:And she turned out the light and dosed the door, and that's all there isthere isn't any more [my emphasis]." The quadruple frame of page margin, sky, wall, and doorway, and the steadily diminishing height of the print visually reinforce the narrator's insistence that we are leaving the world of art.In the subsequent stories, Berne [mans varies this pattern to introduce humor and to provide a conclusion appropriate to the adventures.For instance, at the end of Madeline and the Bad Hat, the gids and P"oito, now friends, wave to each other across the courtyard as they brush their teeth.At the conclusion of Madeline and the Gypsies, the safely - returned adventurers have inspired ail the little girls to do acrobatic tricks on the beds. And in Madeline in London, Berne !mans even includes the gids' new pet, the wayward horse:"They brushed his teeth and gave him bread, [my emphasis] And covered him up and put him to bed.... And she turned out the light end dosed the door. There were twelve upstairs, and below one more.' Of the five Madeline books, only Madeline's Rescue does not end with a picture of Miss Cleve! in the dormitory.Instead, Bemeimans chooses to depict the twelve puppiesborn during the nightas they will soon appear on an outing.Significantly, only in this book does he include the words The End' on his non-formulaic final Iliustration, thereby indicating a definite conclusion-to the world of 'story.'

Bemeimans' marked use of symmetry throughout the Madeline books not only signals their status as "art,' but also establishes a basic sense of order within which disorder may be securely contained.In an article entitled 'On the Problem of Symmetry in Art,' Dagobert Frey writes that 'Symmetry signifies rest and binding, asymmetry motion and loosening, the one order and law, the other arbitrariness and accident, the one formal rigidity and constraint, ,.re other life, play and freedom' (quoted in Weyi, 16). We have already seen that Bemelmans enhances the inherent symmetry of a book opened out flat with identical end papers inside the front and beck covers. The opening and dosing actions of the stories are likewise symmetrical:reiuming home is a mirror image of ierving home.Additionally, Bemelmans composes a great many of his illustrations symmetrically, sometimes framing the balanced architecture of Parisian edifices with sky and trees.

Finally, ono of the most striking aspects of symmetry is the nearly symmetrical repetition of the symmetrical imageof 'twelve little girls in two straight lines."Bemelmans places this pattern throughout each book In a manner which, if we were to imagine all of the pages spread out in one long strip end to end, might suggest a repeating border design.It is true that Bemelmans does not use this image at perfectly regular intervals nor in precisely the same direction each time.Nevertheless, behind the slightly asymmetrical but very frequent repetitions of this symmetrical pattern, we sense symmetry as the norm to which asymmetry must return.

Frequently, Bemelmans changes only one element of this twelve-part image as a means of drawing our attention to that which in Frey's terms exhibits 'life, play, and freedom' -in other words, to Madeline herself.For instance, Madeline's tears are all the more noticeable in this image in that she differs from eleven other identical elements in the design.In an illustration from Madeline's Rescue, only the iower right-hand bed-that is, Madeline's bed-has acquired paws and a tail, and only Madeline smiles, while the others look glum. Frequently, Madeline distinguishes herself by tuming around or getting out of line.Yet the fact that the line is there to get ou, of establishes a pervading sense of 'rest" and "order -to use Frey's terms-which contains and controls the many scenes of asymmetry and disorder. The twelve puppies which Genevieve adds to the ranksdo not create chaos; instead, they enhance the complexity of a previously established image, while maintaining Its symmetry.

Because editors felt that the first Madeline was too sophisticated for children, Bemelmans did not succeed in publishing it until fire years after its completion.Yet the success of the fir's books has proven the editors' fears to be groundless.I have suggested that the formal structures of framing, a familiar narrative pattern enhanced by a formulaic opening and dosing, and the repetition of the image of 'twelve little girls in two straight lines' which so dearly designate the books as art-not life-contribute greatly to this success. For the child reader these structures provide a comfortable aesthetic distance from which she may relax and enjoy the exotic-a window onto what in Golden Basket Bemelmans calls an altogether new world, with a new language, new policemen, pastry shops, and lampposts" (15). They are the cage which permits Madeline to 'Pooh-pooh" the tiger.Furthermore, the dominant sense of order established by the symmetry of these structures creates a world of'story' in which we may feel throughout the security expressed by our reliable protectress at the end of Madeline and the Bad Hat:'And as Miss Gavel turned out the light/She said, 'I knew it would all come out right.-

University of Alabama

Note

1Iam not considering in the paper Madeline's Christmas, a considerably shorter wcrf:which was originally published as a book insert in the 1956 McCall's Christmas issue and reissued In bookform by Vichy Press in 1985. Bemelmans was at work on his sixth Madeline book at the time of his death in 1962.

Works Cited

Bemelmans, Ludwig. Golden Basket. New York:Viking, 1836.

Madeline. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1939; London: Verschoyle, 1952.

Madeline's Rescue. New York:Viking, 1953; London: Verschoyie, 1953.

. Madeline and the Bad Hat. New York:Viking, 1956; London: Deutsch, 1958.

. Madeline and the Gypsies. New York:Viking, 1959; London: Deutsch, 1959.

01 99 . Mndeline in London. New York Viking, 1961; London: Deutsch, 1962.

WO, Hermann. Symmetry.Princeton:Princeton UP, 1952.

1...,...0

100 Kenneth Morris and The Mabinogion: The Welsh influence on Children's Fantasy1 by C.W. Sullivan Ill

The medieval Welsh stories published as The Mabinoqion do not amount to a large book, and the oldest segment, the Four Branches of the Mabinogi (dating from about the twelfth century in written form but centuries older in oral tradition), is smaller still, some eighty pages in translation. The Anglo-Welsh author, Kenneth Morris (1879- 1937), srguably the first to use materials trom the four Branches in children's fantasy, is an almost-forgotten (or at least seldom-studied) figure in the history of children's fiction.Yet, without Morris and The Mabinoqion, contemporary children's literature might not Include Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, Nancy Bond's A String In the Harp, Susan Cooper's The Dark is asim series, Alan (.tamer's The Owl Service, and a number of other books (including some of the Arthurian stories) based less directly on these Welsh sources of materials and style.

Although regarded as 'among the finest flowerings of the Celtic genius and, taken together, a masterpiece of ... medieval European literature,the materials which make up The Mabinoqion were completely translated into English only three times prior to 1950 (Jones and Jones Ix).Lady Charlotte Guest made the first complete translation in the 1840s; T.P. Ellis and John Lloyd, using a newly-discovered manuscript, translated The MabInoalon in 1929; and Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones made a translation In 1949.Interestingly, several new translations including a revised version of the Jones and Jones translation (1974), Jeffery Gantz's The Mabinoction (1976), Patrick Ford's The Mabinoqi (1977), (and Gwyn Jones and Kevin Crossley-Holland's Tales From The Mabinoialon, illustrated by Margaret Jones (1984)have appeared recently, and their publication could be a response, in part, to the popularity of the Mabinocrion-based fiction of Alexander, Cooper, Bond, and the rest.

The Mabinoqion itself is something of a cultural stew, containing, as It does, materials which can be traced to sources In mythology, legend, folklore, or history. The oldest materials, the Four Branches, contain mythological elements which are untraceably old, going back, perhaps, to the beginnings of the Celtic civilization and containing obvioLs references to an ancient matriarchal and matrilineal culture and mythology.In addition, most translations include a number of other prose tales tied to the Four Branches only by their date of written composlion, their Welsh sources, and/or their inclusion in the same medieval manuscript or manuscript collection. The "Four Independent Native Tales' and the 'Three Romances," as Jones and Jones called them (vii), were certainly composed in a more recent oral tradition than the Four Branches and have vary little mythology about them. The 'Native Tales' draw heavily on folklore; the 'Romances," medieval in style as well as in content, draw on legend, especially the Arthurian legend. And the Taliesin materials, 'The Tale of Gwion Bach" and The Tale of Taliesin,' both of which deal with the sixth-century bard, are included in a few translations.

The existence, nature, and extent of a Celtic influence on subsequent cultures and literatures has been the subject of considerable debate, some of it acrimonious, for almost a century and a half.In the latter half of the nineteenth, century, Ernest Renan, Matthew Arnold, and William Butler Yeats all argued for a pervasive Celtic influence on subsequent literatures.Their efforts were compromised, somewhat, by the political and social overtones of the turn-of-the-century Celtic Revival and were also denigrated by the majority of Victorians who, as L.P. Curtis, Jr., recounts in Anglo- Saxons and Celts: A Study of Anti -Irish Prejudice in Victorian England (1973), were definitely anti- Celtic and quite convinced that nothing good or valuable could have come from people with a gels ancestry.

As the twentieth century has progressed, fortunately, scholars have begun to recognize the quality of the ancient Irish and Welsh literatures, have begun to assess the possibility of a Celtic influence, and have even come to respect some of Matthew Amold's insights on the subject.Patrick Leo Henry and James Travis have documented correspondences between early Celtic and English poetry, and Martin Puhvel has suggested a Celia influence on "Beowulf."William Rees and Nora Chadwick comment on possible social and political influences the Celts might have had on the Anglo-Saxons. Lucy Alan Paton, Vernon Harward, Helaine Newstead, John Revel Reinhard, and, of course, Roger Sherman Loomis are among those who have attempted to establish Celtic Sources for much of what appears in the later Continental and British Arthurian materials.Arthur Johnston discusses a William Blake painting which seems to have been influenced by a Welsh triad, and Robert Hubach suggests that Telles In's poetry may have had a shaping effect on Walt Whitman's. And there are more.

103 101 But little has been done, to date, to organize the research into the Cett lc influence or to make the public- general or scholarly-aware of the extent of this sort of research.It may be that there are still some traces of the Victorian prejudices against ail things Celtic; but it is more likely that the scholarly community, at least, it so oriented toward the Mediterranean myths and legends-the Greek and Roman materials-as literary Influences that they have given little serious thought to the other myth systems-the Celtic and Scandinavian, for example-as possible literary influences. Moreover, the obvious Celtic and Scandinavian influences on popular literature make it even less likely that they would be considered worthy of study as influences on *serious* literature. And perhaps that Is why the Welsh Influence on children's fantasy has been dealt with so passingly and why the earliest authors, like Kenneth Monis, have only been glanced at.

That Kenneth Morris should have been the first to explore the Welsh materials and use them In children's fantasy is not surprising.He was "right* for that task in many ways.First, he was Welsh and was a native speaker who knew the materials well.Second, a stay in Dublin in 1986 had introduced him not only to a number of young writers and mystics (including Ye ,s, George Russell, and Ella Young), but also to the Theosophical Society of which he was to be an active member, living and teaching at the Point Loma, California community, for the rest of his life. The Dublin experience and the Society membership certainly encouraged him as a writer and also inspired him as a mystic (Zahorskl and Boyer 169-170).Finally, his work as a teacher in the Point Loma community gave him an awareness of the teenage audience for which his two fantasy novels, The Fates of the Princes of Dvfed (1913) and Book of the Three Dragons (1930), were initially written.

Morris's use of materials from The Mabinogion is distinctive.Reduced to the simplest terms, what Morris does is to use some of some materials from the Four Branches and interweave them with materials of his own creation or with materials from other, generally Welsh, sources. He is not using a plot from The Mabinogion as the outline for his story and then expanding it into a full-fledged novel as do Alan Gamer and Evangeline Walton. He does not rely on his primary source that directly.Nor does he, as do Lloyd Alexander and Susan Cooper, create an essentially - original fantasy (and fantasy world) with its own characters to be 114shed out by characters and motifs from The Mabinogion. He does not stand that far away from his sources.In The Fates of the Princes of Dvfed his interweaving is quite obvious and, occasionally, heavy-handed; in Book of the Three Dragons he is a surer and smoother author.

The Fates of the Princes of-Dvfed is based on the First Branch of The Mabinogion, and all of the events of that First Branch appear in the novel.In Morris's hands the roughly twenty pages of the original story, Pwyll Prince of Dyfed," become about one hundred pages of text; the rest of the 300-page novel consists of materials Morris created and developed to complement and fill out what he had developed from the original.For example, the year between the first and second wedding feasts of Pwyll and Rhiannon is described in a sentence or two in the First Branch, but In his novel Morris creates a minor quest to occupy Pwy II for that year.

Before he can appear at the second wedding feast, Pvry If must acquire a magic, unfillable sack or basket. In The Mabinogion Rhiannon simply supplies him with one, but in The Fates cf the Princes of Dyfed Pwyil must go on a traditional, formulaic quest-not unlike the quest of an Arthurian knight-to find the object. With Just three days left Pwyli and his men come upon an old man in need, and following Rh lemon's instruction to not pass by a sorrow until it is lightened, they stop to help. There are three tasks to be done on three separate days by three different men, and PwyH, doing his share on the last day, discovers that the basket he has been given to gather apples In is the object he seeks. The traditional folictale object, the unfillable basket, And the hipilcity of the episode have widespread sources In folktale and legend; Morris uses them here, and spoors elsewhere In The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed, to augment the material he develops from the original.

For the reader who knows The Mabinogion, though, Mortis's first novel can seem somewhat choppy (even though the style remains consistent) as recognizably First Branch sections alternate with sections of Morris's own creation in an almost building-block configuration.Boo:. of the Three Dragons, Mortis's second Hovel and sequel to the first, is much smoother. Although each book is based on a Branch of The Mabinoolort, Morris does not depend so heavily on his source material for the structure of his second novel as he dkl for the structure of the first.In

102 fact, there are only two segments from the Second and Third Branches-the burying of the t, xrd of Bran the Blessed and the learning of three crafts-which are identifiable in Book of the Three Dragons, and both segments have been changed somewhat from the original.

Although It Is also possible to argue that Manawydan's quest in the second novel is patterned after the quest of the main character, also named Manawydan, in the Third Branch, those similarites may only be the similarities that all traditional quest narratives share. Other materials, however, do have identifiable Welsh sources outside of the Four Branches:the yellow calfskin mat which transports the sleeping Manawydan to the court of the gods in Book of the Three Dragons is based on the yellow oxskln mat from The Dream of Rhonabwy,' the description of the court of the gods comes from "The Dream of Macsen Wiedig," and the sword so sharp It can draw blood from the wind can be traced, along with many other items and characters, to 'Cuihwch and Olwen."

it is not only Monis's ability to weave these Welsh Celtic materials (and his own materials) into a smooth whole that makes him an important fantasy writer, It Is also the high language embodying the theme that carries it [the novel] along" (Bisenieks viii).In fact, one of the few critics to comment on Morris, Ursula LeGuin-herself a respected fantasy author-equates Morris with E. R. Eddison and J. R. R. Toikien, terming all three "master stylists" whose characters speak "with genuine Elfiand accents" (77,78). And It is not just that Morris is a master stylist, LGuIn continues, it is also that style Is fantasy,

because in fantasy there is nothing but the writer's vision of the world.... A world where no voice has ever spoken before; where the act of speech is the act of creation. The only voice that speaks there is the creator's voice. And every word counts. (85)

Thus LeGuin asserts, Book of the Three Draa011$ Is a singularly fine example of the recreation of a work magnificent In its own right (the Mabinogion)" (81).Morris rs important, then, as a stylist and as an author who uses his source material well.

It is the climax of Book of the Three Dragons which best illustrates Morris's ability.Martial skills are of little importance in this novel and fade aknost completely away toward the end as Morris chooses to emphee.in bardic skills-storyteHing, singing, and harping. Manawydan uses these skills, skills which the Welsh Celts have always held in high regard, to overcome his foes. By telling them stories until past midnight, Manawydan keeps

Tathal Cheat-the-Ught and his daughter from trapping him and turning him Into stone; and by telling stories, . Manawydan distracts Gwian Cat's Eye, the Sea-Thief, and then recovers the magic Harp of Alawn. Armed now with the Harp (rather than a sword), Manawydan makes the traditional descent into hell to restore order:the stone warriors are released, the Crumbled Kings are restored, and the sleeping Druids are wakened.

This series of scenes does not come from The Mabinoelon but does integrate one of its characters, Manawydan, with several other traditional elements. One of these, the tendency of events to occur in threes, is evident in the three challenges that Manawydan must overcome at the end. The journey to and the ordering of heil, which Manawydan must accomplish to bring the worlds of men and gods Into balance again, is a traditional motif in both ancient literature and mythology; and the emphasis on bardic skills Is also traditional.Monis interweaves these traditional materials, sett, them into a plot largely of his own devising (within traditional formulas), and presents a completed whole in high fantasy style. (Sullivan 542)

If there needs to be more detaited analysis of how and ytyl various authors use materials from The Mabinogion and other Welsh sources, the fiction of Lloyd Alexander, Nancy Bond, Susan Cooper, and Alan Gamer Is certainly sufficient evidence that they do use Welsh materials, that the Welsh materials have had a definite influence on recent children's fantasy.In addition, Kenneth Morris's Influence on the yen traditional materials can be used in fiction Is important.First, he uses the source materials conscientiously, that Is he Is careful not to violate the Integrity of the original stories and characters when he uses them In his novels.Monis's Pwyil of Manawydan Is not Just a name froth The Mabinoolon but a character from The Mabinocion who behaves, in Monis's novel, much the same as he did in the original.In fact, in scenes from the novel which were not in the original Welsh stories,Whin and Manawydan retain their Mabinooion-based characters. Second, Monis is important because the material he

1 " " 103 general characteristics of mythology, legend, and foildale; and the reader who does not know The Mablnoction will be unable to tell which segments came from the Weisn story and which came from Morris's imagination.

Morris, therefore, set the style and the standard for the use of Welsh Celtic materials in children's fantasy. If we look at the best of the recent authors who have drawn on the Welsh materials for their fantasies-Alexander, Bond, Cooper, and Garner, for example-we find that same conscientious use of the Welsh materials and that same consistent creation of new materials first found in the novels of Kenneth Morris. The Mabinoqion has been an Important Welsh Celtic source for recent writers of children's fantasy, and Kenneth Morris showed those writers how to use it.

East Carolina University

1Some of the research for thispaper was conducted at the University College of Wales, the National Library of Wales, and the Children's Literature Research Centre, all in Aberystwyth, Wales on grants from the Children's Literature Association, East Carolina University, the Southern Regional Education Board, and the St. David's Society of New York.

Works Cited

Alexander, Lloyd. The Chronicles of Prydain.5 vols. New York:Holt, 1963-1968.

Arnold, Matthew. On the Study of Celtic Literature (and) On Transiatinq_Homer.1866. New York:Macmillan, 1913.

Bisenieks, Dainis.Introduction. The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed. By Kenneth Morris.North Hollywood, CA: Newcastle, 1978.

. "The Welsh Myth in Modem American Fantasy." Anqlo-Welsh Review 24 (1974): 130-34.

Bond, Nancy. A String in the Harp. New York: Atheneum, 1977.

Bromwich, Rachael. Matthew Arnold and Celtic Literature: A Retrospect,_1_865-1965.London: Oxford UP, 1965.

Chadwick, Nora. The Celtic Background cf Early Anglo-Saxon England.' Ceft and Saxon.Ed. Nora Chadwick. Cambridge: UP, 1964.323-52.

Cooper, Susan. The Dark is Rising.5 vols. New York:Harcourt (vol. 1) and Atheneum (vols. 2-5), 1965-1977.

Curtis, L. P., Jr.An Igo-Saxons and Cefts: A Study of Anti -Irish Prejudice in Victorian England.Berkeley: U of Califomia P, 1968.

Ellis, T. P., and John Lloyd, trans. The Mabinoqion. Oxford:Clarendon, 1929.

Ford, Patrick, trans. The Mabinoction.Berkeley: U of California P, 1977.

Gantz, Jeffery, trans. The Mabinoqion. New York:Penguin, 1976.

Gamer, Alan. The Owl Service.1967. New York:Ballantine, 1981.

Guest, Lady Charlotte, trans. The Mabinoqion.1835-49.London: Dent, 1906.

104 Henry, Patrick Leo. The Earty English and Celtic Lyric. New York:Barnes & Noble, 1967.

Hubach, Robert.'Watt Whitman and TaHessIn.' American Literature 18 (1947): 329.31.

Johnston, Arthur.'William Blake and The Ancient Britons'.' The National Library of Wales Journal XXII (1981-1982): 30420.

Jones, Gwyn, and Kevin Crossley-Holland. Tales from The Mabinoglon. Woodstock, NY: Overtook, 1984.

, and Thomas Jones, trans. The MabInogion. London:Dent, 1949.

Kiefer, Barbara.'Wales as a Setting for Children's Fantasy.'Children's Literature in Education 13 (1982):95-102.

LeGuin, Ursula. From Bland to Poughkeepsie.' The an tgAerjteNight.Ed. Susan Wood. New York: Betiday, 1982.73-86.

Loomis, Roger Sherman.Celtic and Arthurian Romance. New York: Columbia UP, 1927.

. The Grail From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol.Cardiff: U of Wales P, 1963.

. Wales and the Arthurian Legend.Cardiff: U of Wales P, 1956.

Morris, Kenneth. Bbook of the Three Dragons. New York:Longmans, 1930.

. The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed.Point Loma, CA: Aryan 'Theosophical P, 1913.

Newstead, Helaine.Bran the Blessed in Arthurian Romance. New York: Columbia UP, 1939.

Paton, Lucy Alien.Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance. New York:Franklin, 1960.

Puhvel, Martin."Beowulf' and Celtic Tradition. Waterloo, Ont.: Wad Laurier UP, 1979.

Rees, WtIllam.'Survivals of Ancient Celtic Customs In Medieval England.'Angles and Welsh.Cardiff: U of Wales P, 1963.146-68.

Reinhard, John Revel. The Survival of Geis in Medieval Romance. Halle A. S.: Max Niemeyer, 1933.

Renan, Ernest. The Poetry of the Celtic Races.'Vol. 32.Harvard Classics. 50 vols. 1854. New York:Collier, 1910.143-91.

Sullivan, C. W. III.The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed and Book of the Three Dragons.' Survey of Modem Fantasy Literature.Ed. Frank N. Magill.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem, 1983.

. 'Nancy Bond and Welsh Traditions.'Children's Literature Association Quarterly 11.1 (1986):33.37.

. 'Traditional Welsh Materials in Modem Fantasy.'Dragon's Tale: The Journal of the Welsh National Centre for Children's Literature 2 (1985): 2-12.

Travis, James. "The Celtic Derivation of 'Somer Is acumen Lochlann 6 (1974): 128.35.

. Early Celtic Versecraft. Shannon:Irish UP, 1973.

Walton, Evangeline. TheMabinoglonTetralogy. 4 vols. New York:Ballantine, 1970-1974.

y 105 Yeats, William Butler. The Celtic Element in Literature Ideas of Good and Eva. by William Butler Yeats.London: But len, 1903. 270-95.

Zahorsid. Kenneth, and Robert Boyer. Alexander, Wallop. Morris: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography. Boston: G. K Hal, 1961.

#

106 Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale by Jack Zipes

When we think of the fairy Oro today, we prhaarily think of the classical fairy tale. We think of those fairy tales that are the most popular In the Western world:Cinderella, Snow White, tittle Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Reteunzel, Beauty and the Beast Rumpeistiltskin, The Ue Iv Duckling, The Princess and the Pea, Puss in Boots, The Prat King, Jack and the Beanstalk, Tom Thumb, The Little Mermaid, etc.It is natural to think mainly of these fairy tales as if they had always been with us, as if they were part of our nature. Newly written fairy tales, especially those that are innovative and radical, are unusual, exceptional, strange, and artificial because they do not conform to the patterns set by the classical fairy tale.And, if they do conform and become familiar, we tend to forget them after a while, because the classical fairy tale suffices. We are safe with the familiar. We shun the new, the real innovations. The classical faky tale makes & appear that we are ail part of a universal community with shared values and norms, that we are all striving for the same happiness, that there are certain dreams and wishes which are irrefutable, that a particular type of behavior will produce guaranteed result, like living happily ever after with lots of gola In a marvelous castle, our castle and fortress that wM forever protect us from inimical and unpredictable forces of the outside world. We need only have faith and believe in the classical fairy tale, just as we are expected to have faith and believe in the American flag as we swear the Pledge of Allegiance.

The fairy tale is myth. That Is, the classical fairy tale has undergone a process of mythicization. Any fairy tale in our society, if it seeks to become natural and eternal, must become myth. Only Innovative fairy tales are anti- mythical, resist the tide of mythicization, comment on the fairy tale as myth. Even the classical myths are no longer valid as Myths with a capital M but with a small m.Cnat Is, the classical myths have also become ideologically mythicized, de-historiclzed, de-politicized to further the medgemonic interests of the bourgeoisie. As we know from Roland Barthes, myth is de-pollticized speech.

Myth Is a type of speech defined by its intention much more than its literal sense; and that in spite of this, its intention Is somehow frozen, purified, eternalized, made absent by this literal sense.... On the surface of language something has stopped moving:the use of signification Is here, hiding behind the '.act, and conferring on it a notifying look: but at the same time, the fact paralyses the intention, gives it something Oka a malaise producing immobility:Li order to make it innocent, it freezes it.This is because mythi is speech stolen ed restored. Only speech which is restored is no longer quite that which was stolen: when it was brought back, it was not put exactly in its place.it is this brief act of larceny, this moment taken for a surreptitious faking, which gives myth its benumbed look. (124-25)

The fairy tale, which has become the myihified classical faky tale, Is indeed petrified In its restored constellation:It is a stolen and frozen cultural good, or Ku ur as the Germans might say. What belonged to archaic societies, what belonged to pagan tribes and communities wss passed down by word of mouth as a good only to be hardened into script, Christian and patriarchal.It has undergone and undergoes a motivated process of revision, re-ordering, and refinement. AM the tools of modem industrial society (the printing press, the radio, the camera, the film. the record, the videocassette) have made their mark on the fairy tale to make It classical ultimately In the name of the bourgeoisie which refuses to be named, denies involvement; for the fairy tale must appear harmless, natural, eternal, &historian, therapeutic. We are to ilve and breathe the classical fairy tale as fresh, free air. We are led to believe that this air has not been contaminated and polluted by a social class that will not name itself, wants us to continue believing that an air is fresh and free, all fairy tales spring from thin air.

Take Sleeping Beauty. Her story Is frozen.it appears to have always been there, and with each rising sun, she, too, will atways be there, fiat on her back, with a prince hoverirover her, kissing her or about to kiss her.In Charies Perrault's version we read:'The prince approached her tumbling, and fell on his knees before her. The enchantment was over; the princess woke. She gazed at him so tenderly you would not have thought it was the first time she had ever seen him.'is it you, my prince? You have kept me waiting for a long time's (64).

109 107 In the Children's and Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm, we read:'Finally, he came to the tower and opened the door to the small room In which Brier Rose was asleep. There she say, and her beauty was so marvelous that he could not take his eyes off her. Then he leaned over and gave her a kiss, and when his lips touched hers, Brier Rose opened her eyes, woke up, and looked at him fondly' (189).

Just the presence of a man in the Perrault version of 1698 is enough to break the enchantment and revive the princess. The Grimms added the kiss in 1812 to bring her back to life. And generally speaking, it is the Grimms' version which has become frozen into a bourgeois myth.In our day Its consummate representation is the Disney film adaptation, which made many myths out of the already bourgeolsified fairy tale.Here Sleeping Beauty as a housewife -in- training sings some day my prince will come,' and the prince as the great white hope, not unlike Rocky, does battle with the black forces of evil. Disney was a mythcoaniac In the broadest sense of the word, and in his hands, Sleeping Beauty assumed many mythic components:

1) Women are all naturally curious, end, as we know, curiosity ids cats and even sweet, innocent princesses.

2) Men are daring, persistent, and able to bestow life on passive or dead women whose lives cannot be fulfilled until rescued by a prince.

3) Women are indeed helpless without men, and without men they are generally catatonic or comatose, eternally waiting for the right man, always In a prone, death-like position, dreaming of a glorious marriage.

4) Male energy and will power can restore anything to life, even an immense realm in a coma. We just need the right man for the job.

These are still the mythic messages of Sleeping Beauty today. The ancient, communal signification Is buried and lost. The tale's history and wisdom are made speechless by the restored, symbolic constellation that was first molded in script back in the 17th century. Whatever the tale enunciated hundreds of years ago Is less important than the myth it has become and its mythic components which are singled out and issued in unconscionable reprints. We find replications of the classical version everywhere, in advertisements, in daily entrztrnents on the streets, and in our homes.

Yet, just as the classical fairy tale could not totally rob the ancient folk tale of Its signification, the myth cannot rob the classical fairy tale of the utopian impulse of the fairy tale. There is something historically indelible about the utopian wish for a better life in a tale first told even though we may never know when it was first told. The myth which is artificial can only live because the essence of the ancient folk tale refuses to die. The myth is also a fairy tale that cannot abandon its ancient utopian origins.

Sleeping Beauty is not only about female and male stereotypes and male hegemony; it is also about death, our fear of death, and our wish for immortality. Sleeping Beauty is resurrected. She triumphs over death. As the eternal brier rose, she rises from the dead to love and to fulfill her desires. The rising from the dead is an uprising, an attack on the borders of mortality.After her uprising, Sleeping Beauty will know how to avoid danger and death, as she does indeed In the aftermath of the first sequence in the Perrault version. Once awakened, Sleeping Beauty is the knowing one, and we know, too.

The first-told fairy tale impacts knowledge about the world and illuminates ways If, better It in anticipation of a better world to be created by mankind.It is wise and sincere in tendency, and no matter how hardened and ideologically classical It becomes, It retains a good deal of its original wisdom and sincerity. Each innovative re-telling and re-writing of a well-known tale in the cultural heritage is an independent human act seeking to align itself with the original utopian impulse of the first-told tale. On the other hand, the myth is pretentious and deceitful.It seeks to distort the utopian essence and tendency of fairy tales by making 'ideographs' out of them. Myth lulls to sleep, to complacency. The ancient folk tale, however, remains awake beneath the intended perversion.

108 But the classical fairy tale's knowing and knowledgeable core, awake as It Is, will not be realized as long as myth fetishlzes it as a commodity. The myth can only be seen again as fairy tale when the myth Is estranged. This means that the frozen constellation must become unfamiliar again; it must be thawed by innovative tales that disassemble the used components of knowing and knowledge and reassemble them into anti-mythic stones.

The revival or resurrection of Sleeping Beauty, our symbolical figure of hope against the forces of death, cannot occur for us in the classical version today, for its sexist closure, its pristine heterosexual and patriarchal resolution Is a coffin of another kind. The resurrection must take place, take its place outside the mythic framework in such re-creations as Anne Sexton's Transformations, Jane Yolen's Sleeoing Ugly, or Olga Broumas' Beginning with 0. Both Sexton and Broumas, in particular, seek to break the prison house of male discourse. Sexton writes:

I must not sleep for while asleep I'm ninety and think I'm dying. Death rattles in my throat Bre a marble. (111)

She questions whether the awakening is an awakening and thus opens our eyes to the desperate situation of women, whose "resurrected" lives may be just as bad as their deaths.

What voyage this, little girl? This coming out of prison God help this life after death? (112)

Whereas Sexton is overly pessimistic in her 'transformations," as is stridently optimistic in her version of Sleeping Beauty and flaunts society's taboos.

City-center, mid- traffic, I wake to your public kiss. Your name is Judith, your kiss a sign.

to the shocked pedestrians, gathered beneath the light that means stop in our culture where red is a warning, and men threaten each other with final violence:I will drink your blood. Your kiss is for them a sign of betrayal, your red lips suspect, unspeakable liberties as we cross the street, kissing against the light, singing This is the woman I woke from sleep, the woman that woke me sleeping.(62).

Such innovative poetic adaptations make the fairy-tale genre more fluid. They start again as tales that revitalize the tradition of firsttold tales, rather than freezing it.Innovative tales explore the dormant potential o: the classical tales to bestow knowledge on us, and unlike myth, they free ancient knowledge in the name of the author, who is not afraid to declare her or his allegiance.Innovative fairy tales take sides, are partial, name their class allegiance. Then question the illusion of happiness and universality in the classical tales and make us realize how far we have yet to go to bring the anticipatory illuminations of concrete utopia to fuffilimcgt. They do not deceive with I 1 I 109 their symbols and metaphors but illuminate. `Once upon c time' in the clatsical fairy tale refers to the point in the past that war; aegi rine beginning. There was no myth then, and even though myth is the dominant form of the fairy tale today, It cannot freeze the genuine beginning forever. Once upon a time keeps shining, and its rays seep through the mythic constellation to tell the tale rgain on its own terms, on our own new terns that embody that which has yet to emu. The mythdespite list:: -urges us to do this as a fairy tale that has not completely forgotten its utopian origins.

University of Florida

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. London: Granada, 1973.

Broumas, Olga.Beginning with 0. New Have: Yale UP, 1977.

Grimm, Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. The Complete Fair/ Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Trans. Jack Zipes. New York: Bantam, 1987.

Perrault, Charles. The Fah, Tales of Charles Perrault. Trans. Angela Carter. New York: Avon, 1977.

Sexton, Anne. Transformati-ms. Boston: Houghton, 1971.

110 Abstracts of Papers Presented at the Fourteenth Annual Conference of The Children's Literature Association

Cross-Cultural Perspectives in the Translation of Children's Books: Erich Kastner's Emil und the Detektive

This paper compares the English and French translations of Erich KAstner's Emil und die Detektive. A translator of children's literature often makes a choice between the importance of the cultural setting and the author's moral or lesson.If a foreign setting makes a work inaccessible to children, who often prefer to read only about their own culture, it may be changed to help assure popularity or financial success. However, if literature serves to present children with their first cross-cultural experiences, a translator should work to preserve the foreignness of a work. These two transletions of Emil illustrate both perspectives. The elements discussed are place and proper names, idiom and metaphor, wordplay, and nicknames and derogatory expressions. The English and French versions are compared with the original as well as with each other.

Catherine C. Baumann University of Minnesota

The Heart of the Wotf and the Disorder of Civilization

Scott O'Dell's Island of the Biue Dolphins, Jean Craighead George's Julie of the Wolves and Whitley Strieber's Wotf of Shadows are three novels for young readers that challenge Western cultural traditions' paradigm of civilization vs. wilderness, a paradigm that projects the wilderness as chaotic and morally debased and thereby justifies civilization's exploitation of the natural wild. Through their various narrative modes-ranging from the hope for social integration in comedy, to personal isolation in tragedy, to the bondage of a nuclear winter in irony-all three authors show the destructive consequences as the male power structure operates through the paradigm. They contrast that negative impact with perceptions of native peoples, Eskimo and native Americans, who are and were defeated by civilization.Hcwever, a new alternative emerges In the three novels through the perceptions E id actions of the female protagonists. Through their relation with natural and living things, the reader discovers an inversion of the traditional paradigm: the wolf has the heart that civilization lacks.

Hamida Bosmacan Seattle University

Ten Years of Israel Children's Literature: The Ben Yrtzchak Awards

The Israeli equivalent of the Caldecott medal is the Ben Yrtzchak prize for distinguished illustration of children's books, awarded every two years in cooperation with the youth wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. This paper focuses on some of the winners of the award In order to trace themes in Israeli children's books over a ten-year period. How has the image of himself and his place in society with which the child is confronted changed as society itself has changed? By means of what images are the family, the kibbutz, the city, immigrants, religion, Arabs, America and the wider world 'out there represented? How do these books negotiate opposing impulses-on the one hand towards nostalgia for a simpler life, ...presented at times by the family, at others by traditional religion and at still others by the kibbutz (with fts rejection of the traditional family structure, religion and urban culture in favor of the ideal of physical labor and the cohesive power of the group)-and on the other towards a complex confrontation with modern Re expressing Itself through the wish to explore the interior life and the world beyond

if 3

111 Israel's borders?It will be the suggestion of this paper that in formulating their selections, the judges have chosen books which offer children not only a high quality of illustration and a variety of theme, story and perspective which permits the child to experience some of the tensions of Israeli society, but also, in some measure, a way to come to terms with the choices and possibilities fostering individuation and social development which are generated by and available to the inhabitants of any truly open society.

Ruth Gonen Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Lynne Rosenthal Mercy College

Fura Belpre moved from Spanish language-dominant Puerto Rico (whose people have had U.S. citizenship since 1917) to English language-dominant mainland U.S.A. In 1920.Noting the dearth of Puerto Rican folklore in children's literature, she rendered thirty-five traditional folktales she had heard as a child Into written English form and arranged for their publication for mainstream American children. They reflect the diversity of the Indian, Spanish, and African ethnic backgrounds. Belpre incorporated details of local color.Four illustrators portrayed these Puerto Rican characteristics carefully, while three others did little research. A pioneer in retelling the Puerto Rican folktales, Pura Belpre remains the single contributor in the field.

Karen Nelson Hoyle U. of Minnesota, Minneapolis

',Just Stories:* Swedish Writers and Moral Fiction

Swe:i'sh children's books, seldom discussed in English-language criticism and often not widely available in libraries here, offer an interesting fusion of form and content, especially with regard to moral teaching. Beckman, Sven WernstrOm, and Maria Gripe, show how very different writers acknowledge and validate a teaching function as part of the creative act.Studying writers of other cultures is essential for an understanding of aesthetics as well as for a valid praxis.

Nancy Huse Augustana College

Hope Among the Ruins:Notes Ic.,v,z71 a Nuclear Criticism of Children's Literature

'Nuclear criticism"the application of theories of literary criticism and rhetoric to the fictional representation of nuclear warfareis receiving consideable attention from critics of literature tor adult audiences. Because of the potential survival value of the topic and because of the growing number of children's and young adult fictional titles treating nuclear warfare, I propose to develop a basis for nuclear criticism of children's literature. Through a survey of some of the recent critical discussions of the topic and special attention to Robert Swindell's Brother in the Land, I arrive at some guidelines or principles that may help to bring these books into critical perspective.

Millicent Lenz State University of New York at Albany

112 t Los Nortenos: We Are All Americans, or The Problems of Finding Literature for Children About Hispanics

The author details the problems of locating good literature about Hispanic, or more specifically, Mexican- American culture.Hispanics do not share with the English - speaking world a reverence for the written word, and do not appear to be producing a hidden treasirry of literature which can be shared either In the university classroom or in classrooms for children. Even though Hispanics constitute the fastest-growing minority group in the United States, and in some areas of the country actually form the majority, their culture is not being handed on, either to their own children or to the children of other ethnic groups, in literature.

Ruth MacDonald New Mexico State University

Cultural Arrogance and Realism in Judy Blume's Sweerfudge

Pleas for tolerance are often supported by the conviction that people everywhere are basically the same. This paper explores the cultural arrogance of such assumptions, by exploring first how they cause writers to misrepresent other cultures, and then how they cause readers to assume that specific and surprisingly limited versions of reality actually represent universal truth. An analysis of the limited reality of Judy Blume's SuDerfudge suggests that the novel seems to express a universal reality to nu ny of its readers simply because it mirrors the only fictional reality they are comfortable with-the world as commonly depicted in television situation comedies. A consideration of the relationship between that fictional world and our own real one reveals how popular ^ulture fosters cultural arrogance, and suggests why those brought up on television and books like Sucterfudge often find more conventional literary narratives so difficult.

Perry Node !man University of Winnipeg

The Elaborate Cooking of the Child or Maurice Sendak's International Back Kitchen in Three Jewish Recipes: The Moon, the Mother and the Music

The purpose of this paper, on the one hand, is to investigate the literary use Maurice Sendak made of Jewish traditions ruled by matrilinearity, by the lunar calendar, and by the conception of divinity as Word and Music. It is also to show, on the other hand, how the illustrator, in what his 'master* Henry James calledthat sacred back kitchen of the artist,* could fuse traditional patterns with the themes borrowed from international literature.More precisely in this respect, we mean to point out a very important literary source that Sendak never mentioned. This book is no other than J. H. Ewing's The Brownies and Other Tales and as we'll try to show, it helped Sendak to build the plots of his famous picture book hilogy. We'll proceed in our analysis with the help of C. Levi-Strauss's structural method which seems particularly fitted for the task, since both the author of The Raw and the Cooked and that of In the Night Kitchen shared with thtdr love of music and common Jewish origins a very keen relish for 'cooking.* As one very well knows, 'cooking" in the French anthropologist's book is but a metaphor for the cultural processes that enforce socialization, and so well consider the tasks symbolically laid upon Sendak's heroes in the light of traditional rituals. As it will soon be obvious, the illustrator's stores were less designed as humorous satires on the Victorian system of education than as playful fantasies. The artist, however, never lost sight of the well-being of a child that stands in his books as the true spokesman of modern humanism. Love for music, anyhow, fills his narratives, like Mahler's works, with the merry echoes of all The Songs of the Earth."

Jean Perrot University of Pads

113 The Chicago Gypsies:At Home in the World

The Chicago Gypsies: At Home in the World' is an analysis of a play for young (and old) audiences by V. Glasgow Koste. The protagonist, ten year old Charley, is a member of a theatrical 'tribe."In December, 1931, she and her parents are stranded for a month at Fort Dodge, Iowa, and the play explores Charley's search to discover how she, as an outsider, can forge a place for herself in a culture which is alien to her, and which regards her as a potentially dangerous outsider. The play dramatizes the important truth that you don't have to cross any national borders in order to bump up against, or cross, cultural boundaries:that hotels and houses; youth and age; moving on and staying put; the sanctuary of the dressing room at intermission and the barbaric wilds of the playground at recess; and Chicago, Illinois and Fort Dodge, Iowa, can present rich possibilities for ce".aral antagonisms and exchanges.In addition to the cross-cultural, intergenerational themes of the play, the paper discusses The Chicago Gypsies as a drama of Individuation.

Pamela A. Rooks Iowa State University

Where the Wild Things Are:ICIng Kong as a Fairy Story

Though presumably designed for an adult audience, the movie King Kong presents a number of dimensions useful to a cross-cultural consideration of children's literature.Recalling Maurice Sendak's vivid recollection of the power of the movie over his own youthful imagination, we can regard the film as a kind of modem fairy tale: building on the story of the Beauty and the Beast, Itself a late rendition of the Wild Man myth, and combining elements derived from classics of American literature, like Moby Dick, and more popular counterparts, from Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes to D.W. Griffith's movie, Birth of a Nation, the story of King King incorporates a consistent sequence of mythic elements that help: to explain its long-lived popularity and pawer. Moreover, by tracing the literary allusions to their sources, we car see the extent to which the liminal terrain of children's literature pervades "adult' literature as well, the definitive difference being the willingness, even the necessity, that literature designed for adults accommodate a tragic vision.

John Seeiye Universtty of Florida

Making a Home of One's Own Cross-Cultural Children and Children's Literature

When two cultures cross, the nexus is most often a homeless land with Its children feeling less than whole because they are caught between two mirrors-two ways of seeing -each presenting a different image of the self. This duality gives rise to both emotional conflict and stories-stories about the conflict itself and about the creative act of storytelling-stories the child must hear and tell if the conflict is to be resolved. Four novels for children, each told in the voice of a cross-cultural child, exemplify this symbiotic relationship:Artie Sun Down by Virginia Hamilton; Child of the Owl and Sea Glass by Laurence Yep; and Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden. As they listen to the stories of other searchers and experience the act of telling itself, these four cross - cultural narrators begin to create their own inclusive identities-their inner homes. And, as they tell tleir own autobiographical stories of their search for self, they each evolve from a "they' defined through the eyes of others to an 'I' of self- definition and inner strength.

George Shannon Eau Claire, Wisconsin

114 Cross-cultumlism in Ann Pellowsld's Novels

Anne Pellowsld's four novels are based on her own family and center on the lives of four generations of Wisconsin farm girls of Polish descent. They are set at about thirty year intervals from 1876 to 1967. The stories have lively and memorable characters, plenty of action, and significant themes. Their style is sprightly.In addition, they show very well cross-culturalism between Polish and American cultures.

Marilyn J. Solt Bowling Green State University

115 Other Presentations

PANEL: Uterary Criticism: A Reality in Elementary Classrooms (Uterary Criticism K-6) An official programme of the ChLA committee on Uterary Criticism in the Classroom. Glenna Sloan, Missouri Western State College Joan Glazer, Rhode Island College Peter Roop, Appleton, Wisconsin Richard Van Dongen, University of New Mexico

PANEL Many Books, Many Voices: A Panel on Canadian Children's Books Kathy Lowinger, Executive Director of the Children's Book Centre Linda Sheppard, editor

PANEL Translating Cultures?/Traduire une culture? Translating Canadian and Quebec Children's Uterature/Traduire la litterature enfantine du Canada et du Quebec Barbara Godard, Professor and Translator, York University Marie-Andree Clermont, translator Paula Daveluy, author editor and translator Frances Morgan, translator

PANEL: Approaches to Narrative in International Children's Uterature Peter Hunt, University of Wales, Cardiff Don Pemberton, Victoria College, Australia Rod Mc Gillis, University of Calgary

WORKSHOP: Bring 'em Back Alive: Traditional Tales in Contemporary Classrooms Geoff Fox, University of Exeter

WORKSHOP: Legends of Natural Phenomena in Folklore: The Cross-Cultural Aspects of the Pourquoi Tale Darwin L Henderson, University of Cincinnati Ellen M. Lynch, University of Cincinnati

WORKSHOP: Never Too Young: Novel Study In the Early Elementary Grades Jon C. Stott, University of Alberta Christine Doyle Francis, Educational Consultant, Hartford, Connecticut Novels to be discussed: Fantastic Mr. Fox, Grade 1; Lost and Found, Grade 2; Ramona and Her Father, Grade 3

WORKSHOP: How to Select and Evaluate African and African-American Children's Literature Dr. E. Curtis Alexander, E.C.A. Associates, Chesapeake, Virginia

WORKSHOP: Literature for Children and Young People in a Multi-Cultural Society Taimi M. Ranta, Illinois Stata University Laura E. Gowdy, Professor, Milner Library, Illinois State University

WORKSHOP: The Quest, The Journey, The P.ctorn:Heroes and Wayfarers in Story. A storytelling presentation of how hero stories influence the lives of children and an inquiry into why they appear in every culture. Merna Ann Hecht, children's librarian, Seattle Public Library, freelance storyteller

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